Ralph Ellison, "Invisible Man" The “Invisible Man” is a novel by Ralph Ellison describing a soul-searching story of a young Negro as he navigates through life to attain self-discovery. The novel is informative in understanding every man’s struggle to discover their true self. The story is described by a narrator who refers to himself as the invisible man. Although published shortly before the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, Invisible Man describes the struggles of black men and how to overcome deceptions and social illusions to attain truth. The prologue prepares the reader for the complex story of how the narrator discovered his own invisibility. First, the narrator describes himself as invisible, yet he does not possess transparent skin. Based on the description, he is invisible in the way other people react to him. The narrator provides the reader with an instance where he almost killed a white man on the street. In the epilogue, the description of the narrator as an invisible man refers to the beholder's perception of him. Thus, the entire view is a construction by the society that ignores his own perceptions. The narrator criticizes the other characters' views because it creates a situation where he is forced to conform to their destinies and choices without any regard to his individuality. His desire to take revenge on society is portrayed in unsuspecting ways where he illegally wires his room with electricity from the power company. In his quest to control as much light as he can, the narrator even fixes bulbs in the underground hole in his room (Ellison 6). The idea of stealing electricity from the power company and lighting his own room is symbolic in the sense that he intends to create warmth and use light to keep his space lit. The other source of power for the narrator based on the story is the use of music. In this case, he describes the music, particularly Louis Armstrong, as giving his body a vibration that helps him gain a sense of time—in addition, smoking a reefer every day grants the music a new meaning and ability to see through time. As a result, the narrator cannot be classified because of his heightened ability which allows him to experience time and space in music. The narrator uses the stolen light and knowledge to overcome these definitions, which he later realizes can only be found in himself. In contrast to the prologue, the first chapter presents the narrator’s previous experiences as a naïve high school student. At the time, the narrator is requested to repeat a speech he had given during his graduation. However, he realizes that he must participate in a battle with other black boys before the speech. During the scene, the narrator undergoes a humiliating experience, where all the black boys are blindfolded and put in a boxing ring. Despite having a blindfold, the narrator manages to maneuver through the blindfold and gain a little vision of his opponents. While the narrator is nearly defeated and finally decides to fall on the floor, a white man throws coins on the floor for the boys to collect. The narrator describes the floor as electrified and therefore decides to hold onto his chair leg to avoid being electrocuted. Finally, the narrator is given an opportunity to air his speech and is later given a scholarship. Although humiliated at first, the narrator ignores the shame and celebrates his victory. The first chapter serves to prepare the reader about the previous events that would explain later occurrences. The narrator’s grandfather appears as a tool to provide him with the knowledge that his parents later tell him to ignore. His grandfather haunts him in a dream where he writes ‘Keep this Nigger-Boy Running” (Ellison 21). The battle with other black boys is meant to describe how the white men in the society were pleased with blindfolding black men, keeping them in confusion and fear. An important fact about this scene is that the white men have the power to fulfill their desires by blindfolding black boys and putting them in a boxing ring to fight. As he enters the fight, the narrator claims that he has never experienced darkness, an aspect he describes as scary. The narrator's invisibility is portrayed during his speech, where he knowingly undergoes humiliating moments. “I trembled with excitement, forgetting my pain. I would get the gold and the bills, I thought” (Ellison 21). Despite being choked by blood, the narrator is asked to speak up. Unfortunately, he finally accepts the prize, a scholarship even after the described experiences in the boxing ring. In the epilogue of his story, the narrator realizes that he has lived to justify and vindicate other people’s desires. The narrator's thoughts are filled with his grandfather's last words, which he fails to grant a satisfactory meaning. In this confusion, Ellison wants the narrator to find himself in a situation where the grandfather's words have varied meanings. As such, the scene is meant to help the narrator disregard superficial subordination. In this part, he describes meeting Mr. Norton when he lived underground. As later discovered in the epilogue, the invisible man described by Ellison is Norton's destiny, which he cannot see due to its invisibility. The novel is a major achievement in American literature, particularly in the context of African Americans. Ellison provides a comprehensive description of the experiences of black men in the 20th century. As he navigates through life, the narrator gains an understanding of the black world, the white world, and his own world. At the time, African American literature was characterized by concerns for identity, independence, and freedom. In addition, the literal works targeted to grant black men the ability to dominate society. A key observation is that the novel, invisible man, was published after the Harlem Renaissance that lasted between the 1910s and the 1930s (Bloom 8). The period was characterized by the use of imagery in literal works to connect with the readers. For instance, Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem used black characters to demolish the existing stereotypes at the time (Bloom 29). In addition, the styles used at this time sought to use imagery to bring an understanding of the effects of systemic racism. This factor is emulated in Ellison's novel, where he uses the narrator to provide the reader with a perspective of the events. Another key aspect is that Ellison listens to music by Louis Armstrong, one of the musicians at the time. In some sense, Ellison is inspired by the Harlem Renaissance era to advocate for the identity of black men in American society. The Invisible Man is narrated in the first person to allow the reader to understand the struggles of black men from a personal perspective. This style somewhat helps readers become more connected to the experiences. In summary, this essay has presented an analysis of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Based on the analysis, the novel is a first-person narration where he describes his invisibility in the white man's dominated society. He refers to himself as invisible in the sense that others cannot understand his perception. Symbolism is used in the novel to illustrate how the narrator stole the light from the electric power company to benefit his desires. The novel is inspired by literal styles used at the time that targeted to advocate for equal rights for black people in America. Works Cited Bloom, Harold, ed. The Harlem Renaissance. Infobase Publishing, 2004. Ellison, Ralph. Invisible man. Penguin UK, 2016. 1-451. African American Literature Dr. McMahand Essay Requirements and Guidelines Write a four to six page essay analyzing a text or texts from our course reading list. Your chosen text must be the same as the one for which you presented context. Follow the guidelines listed below and contact me at any point if you are having trouble with your composition. Keep in mind tutoring services such as the Writing Center in LA. The final draft is due on the last day of class before exam day. 1. In your opening paragraph, mention the author and title of the literary work for which you are providing a framework discussion. Also, briefly outline the most important aspects of the paper that you will delve more deeply in the following paragraphs. Do all this succinctly and with smooth transitions between sentences. 2. Your thesis, posited at the end of paragraph one, should indicate in clear, active prose the impact of biography, history, publishing trends, etc. on the text. Example one: Although published at either end of the Civil Rights era, Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding (1945) and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977) similarly document the relationship between black political resistance and pastoral settings. Example two: "the mother" bridges the gap between the end of the Harlem Renaissance and the new era of literary realism, employing a hard-hitting approach to humanize a problem within the urban black community without preaching or laying judgement on her subject. Notice that the authors assert the importance of an historical frame in making an effective analysis of the literary work. Likewise, make your thesis direct, focused, and contextual. 3. After the introduction, fill in the background of your discussion. For the first page or two, draw from your presentation facts and realities that prove most relevant to your analysis. In your context, you may mention just how the author or work has influenced (or has been influenced by) other writings in the black/American canon. You may also explain how the work embodies the principles, controversies, and aesthetics of any era—from the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement and beyond. More specifically, you should highlight key concepts, theories, and style elements typical of the era in which the text first appears. 4. Each body paragraph should gesture back to the thesis with topic sentences, minor claims, examples, and quotations from the external sources you used for your presentation. As the first part of your essay gives the context, the second part focuses on the text itself. Here you should examine the text’s uses of literary devices— simile, metaphor, imagery, foreshadowing, conflict, character development, etc. 5. For those of you writing about nonfiction works like “The Negro Art Hokum” and “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” your task is a little different. You must create a context like the other essays do, but your thesis needs to address how well the essayist makes the argument or how well the piece addresses the issues of its day. Example thesis: Locke’s essay details many positive effects of the Black Migration, including economic empowerment and cosmopolitanism, but in light of other pieces published during the same time as the essay, some of his points appear more idealistic than realistic. Secondly, your analysis section should look specifically at key points of argument in the essay, explaining where you agree, disagree, find it at fault, or find it convincing. Using this thesis on Locke, you would examine throughout your body paragraphs any number of his eight major claims in “The New Negro” and show how they may be too excessive in their excitement about the prospects of black progress. Like the other essays, each body paragraph should begin with a minor claim that derives from the thesis. Each paragraph should include a quote or paraphrase from the source text and offer an interpretative analysis that furthers your thesis. 6. Take time to edit your essay, looking for errors in grammar, mechanics (use MLA formatting, quoting, and citing). Make sure you develop your paragraphs fully and that you have not plagiarized any of the material. Any act of plagiarism will result in failing the essay and the course. I will also report you to the Honor Board. 7. If you know you have problems with composition, schedule an appointment with me and/or go to the Writing Center. Except as a last resort, I do not advise getting help from a friend, family member, or roommate. Be sure to read and re-read your work for content, grammar, and mechanics. 8. You may use one to two block quotes in your paper. Again, follow MLA style rules. Finally, include a Works Cited page that also follows MLA stylebook rules. Dr. McMahand African American Literature Preparing for the Essay: Research, Thesis, Topic Sentences, and Outline You must write about works by an author on whom you gave or will give a presentation in this class. Your essay will analyze piece(s) included on the syllabus. (You may not write about works not listed). Below are some guidelines on getting started with research, thesis formation, and outlining. Research and Focus Complete your research using vetted, scholarly sources. You may use Gale Library o r MLA Bibliography, if you possess a more intense and thorough knowledge of the author’s work and, more importantly, the critical discourse surrounding it. Write down your research, keeping the words of published writers separate from your own. Carefully list your sources, authors, titles, and so on. You should build your Works Cited page as you work/research. Do not exceed three sources. You must turn in your research notes with your rough and final drafts. Determine your focus. Let this determination come from your own interests in the author’s writing and from any relevant information you uncover in your research. Let your focus be lasersharp in its intensity, a concentration you can sustain for the three or four pages you devote to analysis in your paper. (Remember, your first page or so presents relevant context). Examples of thematic focus: layers of double consciousness in Cullen’s poems, the thread of violence suturing Wright’s biographical essay “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” the role of men in Brooks’s early poems, the mix of Christian faith and proto-feminist agency in Hurston’s “Sweat,” hyperbole and excess in Baraka’s “Black Art” or Giovanni’s “Ego Tripping,” ecofeminism in Angelou’s “Still I Rise,” pastoral revisioning in Dove’s poems, machismo in Naylor’s “The Two,” jazz as a recuperative force in Ellison, Baldwin, Baraka (implicitly), and Komunyakaa. These are just a few examples. You may use lecture and class discussion to help find your focus, but do not limit yourself. We may have touched on an idea that you develop or rework in your paper. Thesis and Topic Formation Make your thesis argumentative, not a statement of fact. Your thesis does not have to include the works’ titles or authors’ names. Your thesis may be one or two sentences but, for conciseness and clarity, not three sentences. Your thesis must combine theme (which should be more than a single word like love or death or war or consciousness) with an address of some element of context (some idea you take from lecture or research). Like all sentences in your paper, make the thesis as clear and informed as possible. Note that in your essay’s analysis section each body paragraph must begin with a topic sentence, a claim that derives from some part of your thesis. Topic sentences should be argumentative (opinion-centered), focused, and related specifically to the text. Example Thesis Statements "the mother" bridges the gap between the end of the Harlem Renaissance and the new era of literary realism, employing a hard-hitting approach to humanize a problem within the urban black community without preaching or laying judgement on her subject. The degree to which Kenan’s novel embraces nostalgia, critique, and a permutation of these two elements constitutes his rhetorical relationship with Southern Renaissance writing. Like diamond light, Lorde’s poem refracts a wide array of color, a prism of human diversity; without disparaging or minimizing her own subjectivity as a black lesbian, Lorde breaks away from the separatist visioning of black nationalism. Example Topic Sentence The poem begins by probing the notion of blackness as precious, primordial, and total, and then the speaker shifts to a celebration of human difference as signified by the all-inclusive brilliance of a diamond. Getting Started Research. Brainstorm for a focus. Outline your paper. Work out the gist of each section, charting the direction your paper will take. Write a focus statement: I want to focus on _____________ and __________ in my paper. Write out a working thesis. Make sure it fulfills the afore-mentioned criteria. Write out four or five working topic sentences. Make sure they fulfill the afore-mentioned criteria. Type all your work and post the following to Blackboard: your outline, thesis, and at least four topic sentences. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison a.b.e-book v3.0 / Notes at EOF Back Cover: Winner of the National Book Award for fiction. . . Acclaimed by a 1965 Book Week poll of 200 prominent authors, critics, and editors as "the most distinguished single work published in the last twenty years." Unlike any novel you've ever read, this is a richly comic, deeply tragic, and profoundly soul-searching story of one young Negro's baffling experiences on the road to self-discovery. From the bizarre encounter with the white trustee that results in his expulsion from a Southern college, to its powerful culmination in New York's Harlem, his story moves with a relentless drive: -- the nightmarish job in a paint factory -- the bitter disillusionment with the "Brotherhood" and its policy of betrayal -- the violent climax when screaming tensions are released in a terrifying race riot. This brilliant, monumental novel is a triumph of story-telling. It reveals profound insight into every man's struggle to find his true self. "Tough, brutal, sensational. . . it blazes with authentic talent." -- New York Times "A work of extraordinary intensity -- powerfully imagined and written with a savage, wryly humorous gusto." -- The Atlantic Monthly "A stunning block-buster of a book that will floor and flabbergast some people, bedevil and intrigue others, and keep everybody reading right through to its explosive end." -- Langston Hughes "Ellison writes at a white heat, but a heat which he manipulates like a veteran." -- Chicago Sun-Times TO IDA COPYRIGHT, 1947, 1948, 1952, BY RALPH ELLISON All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. For information address Random House, Inc., 457 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10022. This is an authorized reprint of a hardcover edition published by Random House, Inc. THIRTEENTH PRINTING SIGNET BOOKS are published by The New American Library, Inc., 1301 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10019 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA "You are saved," cried Captain Delano, more and more astonished and pained; "you are saved: what has cast such a shadow upon you?" Herman Melville, Benito Cereno HARRY: I tell you, it is not me you are looking at, Not me you are grinning at, not me your confidential looks Incriminate, but that other person, if person, You thought I was: let your necrophily Feed upon that carcase. . . T. S. Eliot, Family Reunion Prologue I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids -- and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination -- indeed, everything and anything except me. Nor is my invisibility exactly a matter of a bio-chemical accident to my epidermis. That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. Then too, you're constantly being bumped against by those of poor vision. Or again, you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom in other people's minds. Say, a figure in a nightmare which the sleeper tries with all his strength to destroy. It's when you feel like this that, out of resentment, you begin to bump people back. And, let me confess, you feel that way most of the time. You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you're a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it's seldom successful. One night I accidentally bumped into a man, and perhaps because of the near darkness he saw me and called me an insulting name. I sprang at him, seized his coat lapels and demanded that he apologize. He was a tall blond man, and as my face came close to his he looked insolently out of his blue eyes and cursed me, his breath hot in my face as he struggled. I pulled his chin down sharp upon the crown of my head, butting him as I had seen the West Indians do, and I felt his flesh tear and the blood gush out, and I yelled, "Apologize! Apologize!" But he continued to curse and struggle, and I butted him again and again until he went down heavily, on his knees, profusely bleeding. I kicked him repeatedly, in a frenzy because he still uttered insults though his lips were frothy with blood. Oh yes, I kicked him! And in my outrage I got out my knife and prepared to slit his throat, right there beneath the lamplight in the deserted street, holding him by the collar with one hand, and opening the knife with my teeth -- when it occurred to me that the man had not seen me, actually; that he, as far as he knew, was in the midst of a walking nightmare! And I stopped the blade, slicing the air as I pushed him away, letting him fall back to the street. I stared at him hard as the lights of a car stabbed through the darkness. He lay there, moaning on the asphalt; a man almost killed by a phantom. It unnerved me. I was both disgusted and ashamed. I was like a drunken man myself, wavering about on weakened legs. Then I was amused. Something in this man's thick head had sprung out and beaten him within an inch of his life. I began to laugh at this crazy discovery. Would he have awakened at the point of death? Would Death himself have freed him for wakeful living? But I didn't linger. I ran away into the dark, laughing so hard I feared I might rupture myself. The next day I saw his picture in the Daily News, beneath a caption stating that he had been "mugged." Poor fool, poor blind fool, I thought with sincere compassion, mugged by an invisible man! Most of the time (although I do not choose as I once did to deny the violence of my days by ignoring it) I am not so overtly violent. I remember that I am invisible and walk softly so as not to awaken the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers. I learned in time though that it is possible to carry on a fight against them without their realizing it. For instance, I have been carrying on a fight with Monopolated Light & Power for some time now. I use their service and pay them nothing at all, and they don't know it. Oh, they suspect that power is being drained off, but they don't know where. All they know is that according to the master meter back there in their power station a hell of a lot of free current is disappearing somewhere into the jungle of Harlem. The joke, of course, is that I don't live in Harlem but in a border area. Several years ago (before I discovered the advantage of being invisible) I went through the routine process of buying service and paying their outrageous rates. But no more. I gave up all that, along with my apartment, and my old way of life: That way based upon the fallacious assumption that I, like other men, was visible. Now, aware of my invisibility, I live rent-free in a building rented strictly to whites, in a section of the basement that was shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century, which I discovered when I was trying to escape in the night from Ras the Destroyer. But that's getting too far ahead of the story, almost to the end, although the end is in the beginning and lies far ahead. The point now is that I found a home -- or a hole in the ground, as you will. Now don't jump to the conclusion that because I call my home a "hole" it is damp and cold like a grave; there are cold holes and warm holes. Mine is a warm hole. And remember, a bear retires to his hole for the winter and lives until spring; then he comes strolling out like the Easter chick breaking from its shell. I say all this to assure you that it is incorrect to assume that, because I'm invisible and live in a hole, I am dead. I am neither dead nor in a state of suspended animation. Call me Jack-the-Bear, for I am in a state of hibernation. My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway. Or the Empire State Building on a photographer's dream night. But that is taking advantage of you. Those two spots are among the darkest of our whole civilization -- pardon me, our whole culture (an important distinction, I've heard) -- which might sound like a hoax, or a contradiction, but that (by contradiction, I mean) is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang. (Beware of those who speak of the spiral of history; they are preparing a boomerang. Keep a steel helmet handy.) I know; I have been boomeranged across my head so much that I now can see the darkness of lightness. And I love light. Perhaps you'll think it strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it is exactly because I am invisible. Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form. A beautiful girl once told me of a recurring nightmare in which she lay in the center of a large dark room and felt her face expand until it filled the whole room, becoming a formless mass while her eyes ran in bilious jelly up the chimney. And so it is with me. Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one's form is to live a death. I myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility. That is why I fight my battle with Monopolated Light & Power. The deeper reason, I mean: It allows me to feel my vital aliveness. I also fight them for taking so much of my money before I learned to protect myself. In my hole in the basement there are exactly 1,369 lights. I've wired the entire ceiling, every inch of it. And not with fluorescent bulbs, but with the older, more-expensive-to-operate kind, the filament type. An act of sabotage, you know. I've already begun to wire the wall. A junk man I know, a man of vision, has supplied me with wire and sockets. Nothing, storm or flood, must get in the way of our need for light and ever more and brighter light. The truth is the light and light is the truth. When I finish all four walls, then I'll start on the floor. Just how that will go, I don't know. Yet when you have lived invisible as long as I have you develop a certain ingenuity. I'll solve the problem. And maybe I'll invent a gadget to place my coffeepot on the fire while I lie in bed, and even invent a gadget to warm my bed -- like the fellow I saw in one of the picture magazines who made himself a gadget to warm his shoes! Though invisible, I am in the great American tradition of tinkers. That makes me kin to Ford, Edison and Franklin. Call me, since I have a theory and a concept, a "thinker-tinker." Yes, I'll warm my shoes; they need it, they're usually full of holes. I'll do that and more. Now I have one radio-phonograph; I plan to have five. There is a certain acoustical deadness in my hole, and when I have music I want to feel its vibration, not only with my ear but with my whole body. I'd like to hear five recordings of Louis Armstrong playing and singing "What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue" -- all at the same time. Sometimes now I listen to Louis while I have my favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and sloe gin. I pour the red liquid over the white mound, watching it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends that military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound. Perhaps I like Louis Armstrong because he's made poetry out of being invisible. I think it must be because he's unaware that he is invisible. And my own grasp of invisibility aids me to understand his music. Once when I asked for a cigarette, some jokers gave me a reefer, which I lighted when I got home and sat listening to my phonograph. It was a strange evening. Invisibility, let me explain, gives one a slightly different sense of time, you're never quite on the beat. Sometimes you're ahead and sometimes behind. Instead of the swift and imperceptible flowing of time, you are aware of its nodes, those points where time stands still or from which it leaps ahead. And you slip into the breaks and look around. That's what you hear vaguely in Louis' music. Once I saw a prizefighter boxing a yokel. The fighter was swift and amazingly scientific. His body was one violent flow of rapid rhythmic action. He hit the yokel a hundred times while the yokel held up his arms in stunned surprise. But suddenly the yokel, rolling about in the gale of boxing gloves, struck one blow and knocked science, speed and footwork as cold as a well-digger's posterior. The smart money hit the canvas. The long shot got the nod. The yokel had simply stepped inside of his opponent's sense of time. So under the spell of the reefer I discovered a new analytical way of listening to music. The unheard sounds came through, and each melodic line existed of itself, stood out clearly from all the rest, said its piece, and waited patiently for the other voices to speak. That night I found myself hearing not only in time, but in space as well. I not only entered the music but descended, like Dante, into its depths. And beneath the swiftness of the hot tempo there was a slower tempo and a cave and I entered it and looked around and heard an old woman singing a spiritual as full of Weltschmerz as flamenco, and beneath that lay a still lower level on which I saw a beautiful girl the color of ivory pleading in a voice like my mother's as she stood before a group of slave owners who bid for her naked body, and below that I found a lower level and a more rapid tempo and I heard someone shout: "Brothers and sisters, my text this morning is the 'Blackness of Blackness.' " And a congregation of voices answered: "That blackness is most black, brother, most black . . ." "In the beginning . . ." "At the very start," they cried. ". . . there was blackness . . ." "Preach it . . ." ". . . and the sun . . ." "The sun, Lawd . . ." ". . . was bloody red . . ." "Red . . ." "Now black is . . ." the preacher shouted. "Bloody . . ." "I said black is . . ." "Preach it, brother . . ." ". . . an' black ain't . . " "Red, Lawd, red: He said it's red!" "Amen, brother . . ." "Black will git you . . ." "Yes, it will . . ." ". . . an' black won't . . ." "Naw, it won't!" "It do . . ." "It do, Lawd . . ." ". . . an' it don't." "Halleluiah . . ." ". . . It'll put you, glory, glory, Oh my Lawd, in the WHALE'S BELLY." "Preach it, dear brother . . ." ". . . an' make you tempt . . ." "Good God a-mighty!" "Old Aunt Nelly!" "Black will make you . . ." "Black . . ." ". . . or black will un-make you." "Ain't it the truth, Lawd?" And at that point a voice of trombone timbre screamed at me, "Git out of, here, you fool! Is you ready to commit treason?" And I tore myself away, hearing the old singer of spirituals moaning, "Go curse your God, boy, and die." I stopped and questioned her, asked her what was wrong. "I dearly loved my master, son," she said. "You should have hated him," I said. "He gave me several sons," she said, "and because I loved my sons I learned to love their father though I hated him too." "I too have become acquainted with ambivalence," I said. "That's why I'm here." "What's that?" "Nothing, a word that doesn't explain it. Why do you moan?" "I moan this way 'cause he's dead," she said. "Then tell me, who is that laughing upstairs?" "Them's my sons. They glad." "Yes, I can understand that too," I said. "I laughs too, but I moans too. He promised to set us free but he never could bring hisself to do it. Still I loved him . . ." "Loved him? You mean . . ." "Oh yes, but 1 loved something else even more." "What more?" "Freedom." "Freedom," I said. "Maybe freedom lies in hating." "Naw, son, it's in loving. I loved him and give him the poison and he withered away like a frost-bit apple. Them boys woulda tore him to pieces with they homemake knives." "A mistake was made somewhere," I said, "I'm confused." And I wished to say other things, but the laughter upstairs became too loud and moan-like for me and I tried to break out of it, but I couldn't. Just as I was leaving I felt an urgent desire to ask her what freedom was and went back. She sat with her head in her hands, moaning softly; her leather-brown face was filled with sadness. "Old woman, what is this freedom you love so well?" I asked around a corner of my mind. She looked surprised, then thoughtful, then baffled. "I done forgot, son. It's all mixed up. First I think it's one thing, then I think it's another. It gits my head to spinning. I guess now it ain't nothing but knowing how to say what I got up in my head. But it's a hard job, son. Too much is done happen to me in too short a time. Hit's like I have a fever. Ever' time I starts to walk my head gits to swirling and I falls down. Or if it ain't that, it's the boys; they gits to laughing and wants to kill up the white folks. They's bitter, that's what they is . . ." "But what about freedom?" "Leave me 'lone, boy; my head aches!" I left her, feeling dizzy myself. I didn't get far. Suddenly one of the sons, a big fellow six feet tall, appeared out of nowhere and struck me with his fist. "What's the matter, man?" I cried. "You made Ma cry!" "But how?" I said, dodging a blow. "Askin' her them questions, that's how. Git outa here and stay, and next time you got questions like that, ask yourself!" He held me in a grip like cold stone, his fingers fastening upon my windpipe until I thought I would suffocate before he finally allowed me to go. I stumbled about dazed, the music beating hysterically in my ears. It was dark. My head cleared and I wandered down a dark narrow passage, thinking I heard his footsteps hurrying behind me. I was sore, and into my being had come a profound craving for tranquillity, for peace and quiet, a state I felt I could never achieve. For one thing, the trumpet was blaring and the rhythm was too hectic. A tomtom beating like heart-thuds began drowning out the trumpet, filling my ears. I longed for water and I heard it rushing through the cold mains my fingers touched as I felt my way, but I couldn't stop to search because of the footsteps behind me. "Hey, Ras," I called. "Is it you, Destroyer? Rinehart?" No answer, only the rhythmic footsteps behind me. Once I tried crossing the road, but a speeding machine struck me, scraping the skin from my leg as it roared past. Then somehow I came out of it, ascending hastily from this underworld of sound to hear Louis Armstrong innocently asking, What did I do To be so black And blue? At first I was afraid; this familiar music had demanded action, the kind of which I was incapable, and yet had I lingered there beneath the surface I might have attempted to act. Nevertheless, I know now that few really listen to this music. I sat on the chair's edge in a soaking sweat, as though each of my 1,369 bulbs had everyone become a klieg light in an individual setting for a third degree with Ras and Rinehart in charge. It was exhausting -- as though I had held my breath continuously for an hour under the terrifying serenity that comes from days of intense hunger. And yet, it was a strangely satisfying experience for an invisible man to hear the silence of sound. I had discovered unrecognized compulsions of my being -- even though I could not answer "yes" to their promptings. I haven't smoked a reefer since, however; not because they're illegal, but because to see around corners is enough (that is not unusual when you are invisible). But to hear around them is too much; it inhibits action. And despite Brother Jack and all that sad, lost period of the Brotherhood, I believe in nothing if not in action. Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action. Besides, the drug destroys one's sense of time completely. If that happened, I might forget to dodge some bright morning and some cluck would run me down with an orange and yellow street car, or a bilious bus! Or I might forget to leave my hole when the moment for action presents itself. Meanwhile I enjoy my life with the compliments of Monopolated Light & Power. Since you never recognize me even when in closest contact with me, and since, no doubt, you'll hardly believe that I exist, it won't matter if you know that I tapped a power line leading into the building and ran it into my hole in the ground. Before that I lived in the darkness into which I was chased, but now I see. I've illuminated the blackness of my invisibility -- and vice versa. And so I play the invisible music of my isolation. The last statement doesn't seem just right, does it? But it is; you hear this music simply because music is heard and seldom seen, except by musicians. Could this compulsion to put invisibility down in black and white be thus an urge to make music of invisibility? But I am an orator, a rabble rouser -- Am? I was, and perhaps shall be again. Who knows? All sickness is not unto death, neither is invisibility. I can hear you say, "What a horrible, irresponsible bastard!" And you're right. I leap to agree with you. I am one of the most irresponsible beings that ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me? And wait until I reveal how truly irresponsible I am. Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a form of agreement. Take the man whom I almost killed: Who was responsible for that near murder -- I? I don't think so, and I refuse it. I won't buy it. You can't give it to me. He bumped me, he insulted me. Shouldn't he, for his own personal safety, have recognized my hysteria, my "danger potential"? He, let us say, was lost in a dream world. But didn't he control that dream world -- which, alas, is only too real! -- and didn't he rule me out of it? And if he had yelled for a policeman, wouldn't I have been taken for the offending one? Yes, yes, yes! Let me agree with you, I was the irresponsible one; for I should have used my knife to protect the higher interests of society. Some day that kind of foolishness will cause us tragic trouble. All dreamers and sleepwalkers must pay the price, and even the invisible victim is responsible for the fate of all. But I shirked that responsibility; I became too snarled in the incompatible notions that buzzed within my brain. I was a coward . . . But what did I do to be so blue? Bear with me. Chapter 1 It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was na?e. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man! And yet I am no freak of nature, nor of history. I was in the cards, other things having been equal (or unequal) eighty-five years ago. I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time been ashamed. About eighty-five years ago they were told that they were free, united with others of our country in everything pertaining to the common good, and, in everything social, separate like the fingers of the hand. And they believed it. They exulted in it. They stayed in their place, worked hard, and brought up my father to do the same. But my grandfather is the one. He was an odd old guy, my grandfather, and I am told I take after him. It was he who caused the trouble. On his deathbed he called my father to him and said, "Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. Live with your head in the lion's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open." They thought the old man had gone out of his mind. He had been the meekest of men. The younger children were rushed from the room, the shades drawn and the flame of the lamp turned so low that it sputtered on the wick like the old man's breathing. "Learn it to the younguns," he whispered fiercely; then he died. But my folks were more alarmed over his last words than over his dying. It was as though he had not died at all, his words caused so much anxiety. I was warned emphatically to forget what he had said and, indeed, this is the first time it has been mentioned outside the family circle. It had a tremendous effect upon me, however. I could never be sure of what he meant. Grandfather had been a quiet old man who never made any trouble, yet on his deathbed he had called himself a traitor and a spy, and he had spoken of his meekness as a dangerous activity. It became a constant puzzle which lay unanswered in the back of my mind. And whenever things went well for me I remembered my grandfather and felt guilty and uncomfortable. It was as though I was carrying out his advice in spite of myself. And to make it worse, everyone loved me for it. I was praised by the most lily-white men of the town. I was considered an example of desirable conduct -- just as my grandfather had been. And what puzzled me was that the old man had defined it as treachery. When I was praised for my conduct I felt a guilt that in some way I was doing something that was really against the wishes of the white folks, that if they had understood they would have desired me to act just the opposite, that I should have been sulky and mean, and that that really would have been what they wanted, even though they were fooled and thought they wanted me to act as I did. It made me afraid that some day they would look upon me as a traitor and I would be lost. Still I was more afraid to act any other way because they didn't like that at all. The old man's words were like a curse. On my graduation day I delivered an oration in which I showed that humility was the secret, indeed, the very essence of progress. (Not that I believed this -- how could I, remembering my grandfather? -- I only believed that it worked.) It was a great success. Everyone praised me and I was invited to give the speech at a gathering of the town's leading white citizens. It was a triumph for our whole community. It was in the main ballroom of the leading hotel. When I got there I discovered that it was on the occasion of a smoker, and I was told that since I was to be there anyway I might as well take part in the battle royal to be fought by some of my schoolmates as part of the entertainment. The battle royal came first. All of the town's big shots were there in their tuxedoes, wolfing down the buffet foods, drinking beer and whiskey and smoking black cigars. It was a large room with a high ceiling. Chairs were arranged in neat rows around three sides of a portable boxing ring. The fourth side was clear, revealing a gleaming space of polished floor. I had some misgivings over the battle royal, by the way. Not from a distaste for fighting, but because I didn't care too much for the other fellows who were to take part. They were tough guys who seemed to have no grandfather's curse worrying their minds. No one could mistake their toughness. And besides, I suspected that fighting a battle royal might detract from the dignity of my speech. In those pre-invisible days I visualized myself as a potential Booker T. Washington. But the other fellows didn't care too much for me either, and there were nine of them. I felt superior to them in my way, and I didn't like the manner in which we were all crowded together into the servants' elevator. Nor did they like my being there. In fact, as the warmly lighted floors flashed past the elevator we had words over the fact that I, by taking part in the fight, had knocked one of their friends out of a night's work. We were led out of the elevator through a rococo hall into an anteroom and told to get into our fighting togs. Each of us was issued a pair of boxing gloves and ushered out into the big mirrored hall, which we entered looking cautiously about us and whispering, lest we might accidentally be heard above the noise of the room. It was foggy with cigar smoke. And already the whiskey was taking effect. I was shocked to see some of the most important men of the town quite tipsy. They were all there -- bankers, lawyers, judges, doctors, fire chiefs, teachers, merchants. Even one of the more fashionable pastors. Something we could not see was going on up front. A clarinet was vibrating sensuously and the men were standing up and moving eagerly forward. We were a small tight group, clustered together, our bare upper bodies touching and shining with anticipatory sweat; while up front the big shots were becoming increasingly excited over something we still could not see. Suddenly I heard the school superintendent, who had told me to come, yell, "Bring up the shines, gentlemen! Bring up the little shines!" We were rushed up to the front of the ballroom, where it smelled even more strongly of tobacco and whiskey. Then we were pushed into place. I almost wet my pants. A sea of faces, some hostile, some amused, ringed around us, and in the center, facing us, stood a magnificent blonde -- stark naked. There was dead silence. I felt a blast of cold air chill me. I tried to back away, but they were behind me and around me. Some of the boys stood with lowered heads, trembling. I felt a wave of irrational guilt and fear. My teeth chattered, my skin turned to goose flesh, my knees knocked. Yet I was strongly attracted and looked in spite of myself. Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked. The hair was yellow like that of a circus kewpie doll, the face heavily powdered and rouged, as though to form an abstract mask, the eyes hollow and smeared a cool blue, the color of a baboon's butt. I felt a desire to spit upon her as my eyes brushed slowly over her body. Her breasts were firm and round as the domes of East Indian temples, and I stood so close as to see the fine skin texture and beads of pearly perspiration glistening like dew around the pink and erected buds of her nipples. I wanted at one and the same time to run from the room, to sink through the floor, or go to her and cover her from my eyes and the eyes of the others with my body; to feel the soft thighs, to caress her and destroy her, to love her and murder her, to hide from her, and yet to stroke where below the small American flag tattooed upon her belly her thighs formed a capital V. I had a notion that of all in the room she saw only me with her impersonal eyes. And then she began to dance, a slow sensuous movement; the smoke of a hundred cigars clinging to her like the thinnest of veils. She seemed like a fair bird-girl girdled in veils calling to me from the angry surface of some gray and threatening sea. I was transported. Then I became aware of the clarinet playing and the big shots yelling at us. Some threatened us if we looked and others if we did not. On my right I saw one boy faint. And now a man grabbed a silver pitcher from a table and stepped close as he dashed ice water upon him and stood him up and forced two of us to support him as his head hung and moans issued from his thick bluish lips. Another boy began to plead to go home. He was the largest of the group, wearing dark red fighting trunks much too small to conceal the erection which projected from him as though in answer to the insinuating low-registered moaning of the clarinet. He tried to hide himself with his boxing gloves. And all the while the blonde continued dancing, smiling faintly at the big shots who watched her with fascination, and faintly smiling at our fear. I noticed a certain merchant who followed her hungrily, his lips loose and drooling. He was a large man who wore diamond studs in a shirtfront which swelled with the ample paunch underneath, and each time the blonde swayed her undulating hips he ran his hand through the thin hair of his bald head and, with his arms upheld, his posture clumsy like that of an intoxicated panda, wound his belly in a slow and obscene grind. This creature was completely hypnotized. The music had quickened. As the dancer flung herself about with a detached expression on her face, the men began reaching out to touch her. I could see their beefy fingers sink into the soft flesh. Some of the others tried to stop them and she began to move around the floor in graceful circles, as they gave chase, slipping and sliding over the polished floor. It was mad. Chairs went crashing, drinks were spilt, as they ran laughing and howling after her. They caught her just as she reached a door, raised her from the floor, and tossed her as college boys are tossed at a hazing, and above her red, fixed-smiling lips I saw the terror and disgust in her eyes, almost like my own terror and that which I saw in some of the other boys. As I watched, they tossed her twice and her soft breasts seemed to flatten against the air and her legs flung wildly as she spun. Some of the more sober ones helped her to escape. And I started off the floor, heading for the anteroom with the rest of the boys. Some were still crying and in hysteria. But as we tried to leave we were stopped and ordered to get into the ring. There was nothing to do but what we were told. All ten of us climbed under the ropes and allowed ourselves to be blindfolded with broad bands of white cloth. One of the men seemed to feel a bit sympathetic and tried to cheer us up as we stood with our backs against the ropes. Some of us tried to grin. "See that boy over there?" one of the men said. "I want you to run across at the bell and give it to him right in the belly. If you don't get him, I'm going to get you. I don't like his looks." Each of us was told the same. The blindfolds were put on. Yet even then I had been going over my speech. In my mind each word was as bright as flame. I felt the cloth pressed into place, and frowned so that it would be loosened when I relaxed. But now I felt a sudden fit of blind terror. I was unused to darkness. It was as though I had suddenly found myself in a dark room filled with poisonous cottonmouths. I could hear the bleary voices yelling insistently for the battle royal to begin. "Get going in there!" "Let me at that big nigger!" I strained to pick up the school superintendent's voice, as though to squeeze some security out of that slightly more familiar sound. "Let me at those black sonsabitches!" someone yelled. "No, Jackson, no!" another voice yelled. "Here, somebody, help me hold Jack." "I want to get at that ginger-colored nigger. Tear him limb from limb," the first voice yelled. I stood against the ropes trembling. For in those days I was what they called ginger-colored, and he sounded as though he might crunch me between his teeth like a crisp ginger cookie. Quite a struggle was going on. Chairs were being kicked about and I could hear voices grunting as with a terrific effort. I wanted to see, to see more desperately than ever before. But the blindfold was as tight as a thick skin-puckering scab and when I raised my gloved hands to push the layers of white aside a voice yelled, "Oh, no you don't, black bastard! Leave that alone!" "Ring the bell before Jackson kills him a coon!" someone boomed in the sudden silence. And I heard the bell clang and the sound of the feet scuffling forward. A glove smacked against my head. I pivoted, striking out stiffly as someone went past, and felt the jar ripple along the length of my arm to my shoulder. Then it seemed as though all nine of the boys had turned upon me at once. Blows pounded me from all sides while I struck out as best I could. So many blows landed upon me that I wondered if I were not the only blindfolded fighter in the ring, or if the man called Jackson hadn't succeeded in getting me after all. Blindfolded, I could no longer control my motions. I had no dignity. I stumbled about like a baby or a drunken man. The smoke had become thicker and with each new blow it seemed to sear and further restrict my lungs. My saliva became like hot bitter glue. A glove connected with my head, filling my mouth with warm blood. It was everywhere. I could not tell if the moisture I felt upon my body was sweat or blood. A blow landed hard against the nape of my neck. I felt myself going over, my head hitting the floor. Streaks of blue light filled the black world behind the blindfold. I lay prone, pretending that I was knocked out, but felt myself seized by hands and yanked to my feet. "Get going, black boy! Mix it up!" My arms were like lead, my head smarting from blows. I managed to feel my way to the ropes and held on, trying to catch my breath. A glove landed in my mid-section and I went over again, feeling as though the smoke had become a knife jabbed into my guts. Pushed this way and that by the legs milling around me, I finally pulled erect and discovered that I could see the black, sweat-washed forms weaving in the smoky-blue atmosphere like drunken dancers weaving to the rapid drum-like thuds of blows. Everyone fought hysterically. It was complete anarchy. Everybody fought everybody else. No group fought together for long. Two, three, four, fought one, then turned to fight each other, were themselves attacked. Blows landed below the belt and in the kidney, with the gloves open as well as closed, and with my eye partly opened now there was not so much terror. I moved carefully, avoiding blows, although not too many to attract attention, fighting from group to group. The boys groped about like blind, crabs crouching to cautious protect their mid-sections, their heads pulled in short against their shoulders, their arms stretched nervously before them, with their fists testing the smoke-filled air like the knobbed feelers of hypersensitive snails. In one corner I glimpsed a boy violently punching the air and heard him scream in pain as he smashed his hand against a ring post. For a second I saw him bent over holding his hand, then going down as a blow caught his unprotected head. I played one group against the other, slipping in and throwing a punch then stepping out of range while pushing the others into the melee to take the blows blindly aimed at me. The smoke was agonizing and there were no rounds, no bells at three minute intervals to relieve our exhaustion. The room spun round me, a swirl of lights, smoke, sweating bodies surrounded by tense white faces. I bled from both nose and mouth, the blood spattering upon my chest. The men kept yelling, "Slug him, black boy! Knock his guts out!" "Uppercut him! Kill him! Kill that big boy!" Taking a fake fall, I saw a boy going down heavily beside me as though we were felled by a single blow, saw a sneaker-clad foot shoot into his groin as the two who had knocked him down stumbled upon him. I rolled out of range, feeling a twinge of nausea. The harder we fought the more threatening the men became. And yet, I had begun to worry about my speech again. How would it go? Would they recognize my ability? What would they give me? I was fighting automatically when suddenly I noticed that one after another of the boys was leaving the ring. I was surprised, filled with panic, as though I had been left alone with an unknown danger. Then I understood. The boys had arranged it among themselves. It was the custom for the two men left in the ring to slug it out for the winner's prize. I discovered this too late. When the bell sounded two men in tuxedoes leaped into the ring and removed the blindfold. I found myself facing Tatlock, the biggest of the gang. I felt sick at my stomach. Hardly had the bell stopped ringing in my ears than it clanged again and I saw him moving swiftly toward me. Thinking of nothing else to do I hit him smash on the nose. He kept coming, bringing the rank sharp violence of stale sweat. His face was a black blank of a face, only his eyes alive -- with hate of me and aglow with a feverish terror from what had happened to us all. I became anxious. I wanted to deliver my speech and he came at me as though he meant to beat it out of me. I smashed him again and again, taking his blows as they came. Then on a sudden impulse I struck him lightly and as we clinched, I whispered, "Fake like I knocked you out, you can have the prize." "I'll break your behind," he whispered hoarsely. "For them?" "For me, sonofabitch!" They were yelling for us to break it up and Tatlock spun me half around with a blow, and as a joggled camera sweeps in a reeling scene, I saw the howling red faces crouching tense beneath the cloud of blue-gray smoke. For a moment the world wavered, unraveled, flowed, then my head cleared and Tatlock bounced before me. That fluttering shadow before my eyes was his jabbing left hand. Then falling forward, my head against his damp shoulder, I whispered, "I'll make it five dollars more." "Go to hell!" But his muscles relaxed a trifle beneath my pressure and I breathed, "Seven?" "Give it to your ma," he said, ripping me beneath the heart. And while I still held him I butted him and moved away. I felt myself bombarded with punches. I fought back with hopeless desperation. I wanted to deliver my speech more than anything else in the world, felt that only these men could judge truly my ability, and now this stupid clown was ruining my chances. I began fighting carefully now, moving in to punch him and out again with my greater speed. A lucky blow to his chin and I had him going too -- until I heard a loud voice yell, "I got my money on the big boy." Hearing this, I almost dropped my guard. I was confused: Should I try to win against the voice out there? Would not this go against my speech, and was not this a moment for humility, for nonresistance? A blow to my head as I danced about sent my right eye popping like a jack-in-the-box and settled my dilemma. The room went red as I fell. It was a dream fall, my body languid and fastidious as to where to land, until the floor became impatient and smashed up to meet me. A moment later I came to. An hypnotic voice said FIVE emphatically. And I lay there, hazily watching a dark red spot of my own blood shaping itself into a butterfly, glistening and soaking into the soiled gray world of the canvas. When the voice drawled TEN I was lifted up and dragged to a chair. I sat dazed. My eye pained and swelled with each throb of my pounding heart and I wondered if now I would be allowed to speak. I was wringing wet, my mouth still bleeding. We were grouped along the wall now. The other boys ignored me as they congratulated Tatlock and speculated as to how much they would be paid. One boy whimpered over his smashed hand. Looking up front, I saw attendants in white jackets rolling the portable ring away and placing a small square rug in the vacant space surrounded by chairs. Perhaps, I thought, I will stand on the rug to deliver my speech. Then the M.C. called to us, "Come on up here boys and get your money." We ran forward to where the men laughed and talked in their chairs, waiting. Everyone seemed friendly now. "There it is on the rug," the man said. I saw the rug covered with coins of all dimensions and a few crumpled bills. But what excited me, scattered here and there, were the gold pieces. "Boys, it's all yours," the man said. "You get all you grab." "That's right, Sambo," a blond man said, winking at me confidentially. I trembled with excitement, forgetting my pain. I would get the gold and the bills, I thought. I would use both hands. I would throw my body against the boys nearest me to block them from the gold. "Get down around the rug now," the man commanded, "and don't anyone touch it until I give the signal." "This ought to be good," I heard. As told, we got around the square rug on our knees. Slowly the man raised his freckled hand as we followed it upward with our eyes. I heard, "These niggers look like they're about to pray!" Then, "Ready," the man said. "Go!" I lunged for a yellow coin lying on the blue design of the carpet, touching it and sending a surprised shriek to join those rising around me. I tried frantically to remove my hand but could not let go. A hot, violent force tore through my body, shaking me like a wet rat. The rug was electrified. The hair bristled up on my head as I shook myself free. My muscles jumped, my nerves jangled, writhed. But I saw that this was not stopping the other boys. Laughing in fear and embarrassment, some were holding back and scooping up the coins knocked off by the painful contortions of the others. The men roared above us as we struggled. "Pick it up, goddamnit, pick it up!" someone called like a bass-voiced parrot. "Go on, get it!" I crawled rapidly around the floor, picking up the coins, trying to avoid the coppers and to get greenbacks and the gold. Ignoring the shock by laughing, as I brushed the coins off quickly, I discovered that I could contain the electricity -- a contradiction, but it works. Then the men began to push us onto the rug. Laughing embarrassedly, we struggled out of their hands and kept after the coins. We were all wet and slippery and hard to hold. Suddenly I saw a boy lifted into the air, glistening with sweat like a circus seal, and dropped, his wet back landing flush upon the charged rug, heard him yell and saw him literally dance upon his back, elbows beating a frenzied tattoo upon the floor, his muscles twitching like the flesh of a horse stung my many flies. When he finally rolled off, his face was gray and no one stopped him when he ran from the floor amid booming laughter. "Get the money," the M.C. called. "That's good hard American cash!" And we snatched and grabbed, snatched and grabbed. I was careful not to come too close to the rug now, and when I felt the hot whiskey breath descend upon me like a cloud of foul air I reached out and grabbed the leg of a chair. It was occupied and I held on desperately. "Leggo, nigger! Leggo!" The huge face wavered down to mine as he tried to push me free. But my body was slippery and he was too drunk. It was Mr. Colcord, who owned a chain of movie houses and "entertainment palaces." Each time he grabbed me I slipped out of his hands. It became a real struggle. I feared the rug more than I did the drunk, so I held on, surprising myself for a moment by trying to topple him upon the rug. It was such an enormous idea that I found myself actually carrying it out. I tried not to be obvious, yet when I grabbed his leg, trying to tumble him out of the chair, he raised up roaring with laughter, and, looking at me with soberness dead in the eye, kicked me viciously in the chest. The chair leg flew out of my hand and I felt myself going and rolled. It was as though I had rolled through a bed of hot coals. It seemed a whole century would pass before I would roll free, a century in which I was seared through the deepest levels of my body to the fearful breath within me and the breath seared and heated to the point of explosion. It'll all be over in a flash, I thought as I rolled clear. It'll all be over in a flash. But not yet, the men on the other side were waiting, red faces swollen as though from apoplexy as they bent forward in their chairs. Seeing their fingers coming toward me I rolled away as a fumbled football rolls off the receiver's fingertips, back into the coals. That time I luckily sent the rug sliding out of place and heard the coins ringing against the floor and the boys scuffling to pick them up and the M.C. calling, "All right, boys, that's all. Go get dressed and get your money." I was limp as a dish rag. My back felt as though it had been beaten with wires. When we had dressed the M.C. came in and gave us each five dollars, except Tatlock, who got ten for being last in the ring. Then he told us to leave. I was not to get a chance to deliver my speech, I thought. I was going out into the dim alley in despair when I was stopped and told to go back. I returned to the ballroom, where the men were pushing back their chairs and gathering in groups to talk. The M.C. knocked on a table for quiet. "Gentlemen," he said, "we almost forgot an important part of the program. A most serious part, gentlemen. This boy was brought here to deliver a speech which he made at his graduation yesterday . . ." "Bravo!" "I'm told that he is the smartest boy we've got out there in Greenwood. I'm told that he knows more big words than a pocket-sized dictionary." Much applause and laughter. "So now, gentlemen, I want you to give him your attention." There was still laughter as I faced them, my mouth dry, my eye throbbing. I began slowly, but evidently my throat was tense, because they began shouting, "Louder! Louder!" "We of the younger generation extol the wisdom of that great leader and educator," I shouted, "who first spoke these flaming words of wisdom: 'A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal: "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The answer from the friendly vessel came back: "Cast down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River.' And like him I say, and in his words, 'To those of my race who depend upon bettering their condition in a foreign land, or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is his next-door neighbor, I would say: "Cast down your bucket where you are" -- cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded . . .' " I spoke automatically and with such fervor that I did not realize that the men were still talking and laughing until my dry mouth, filling up with blood from the cut, almost strangled me. I coughed, wanting to stop and go to one of the tall brass, sand-filled spittoons to relieve myself, but a few of the men, especially the superintendent, were listening and I was afraid. So I gulped it down, blood, saliva and all, and continued. (What powers of endurance I had during those days! What enthusiasm! What a belief in the rightness of things!) I spoke even louder in spite of the pain. But still they talked and still they laughed, as though deaf with cotton in dirty ears. So I spoke with greater emotional emphasis. I closed my ears and swallowed blood until I was nauseated. The speech seemed a hundred times as long as before, but I could not leave out a single word. All had to be said, each memorized nuance considered, rendered. Nor was that all. Whenever I uttered a word of three or more syllables a group of voices would yell for me to repeat it. I used the phrase "social responsibility" and they yelled: "What's that word you say, boy?" "Social responsibility," I said. "What?" "Social . . ." "Louder." ". . . responsibility." "More!" "Respon --" "Repeat!" "-- sibility." The room filled with the uproar of laughter until, no doubt, distracted by having to gulp down my blood, I made a mistake and yelled a phrase I had often seen denounced in newspaper editorials, heard debated in private. "Social . . ." "What?" they yelled. ". . . equality --" The laughter hung smokelike in the sudden stillness. I opened my eyes, puzzled. Sounds of displeasure filled the room. The M.C. rushed forward. They shouted hostile phrases at me. But I did not understand. A small dry mustached man in the front row blared out, "Say that slowly, son!" "What sir?" "What you just said!" "Social responsibility, sir," I said. "You weren't being smart, were you, boy?" he said, not unkindly. "No, sir!" "You sure that about 'equality' was a mistake?" "Oh, yes, sir," I said. "I was swallowing blood." "Well, you had better speak more slowly so we can understand. We mean to do right by you, but you've got to know your place at all times. All right, now, go on with your speech." I was afraid. I wanted to leave but I wanted also to speak and I was afraid they'd snatch me down. "Thank you, sir," I said, beginning where I had left off, and having them ignore me as before. Yet when I finished there was a thunderous applause. I was surprised to see the superintendent come forth with a package wrapped in white tissue paper, and, gesturing for quiet, address the men. "Gentlemen, you see that I did not overpraise this boy. He makes a good speech and some day he'll lead his people in the proper paths. And I don't have to tell you that that is important in these days and times. This is a good, smart boy, and so to encourage him in the right direction, in the name of the Board of Education I wish to present him a prize in the form of this . . ." He paused, removing the tissue paper and revealing a gleaming calfskin brief case. ". . . in the form of this first-class article from Shad Whitmore's shop." "Boy," he said, addressing me, "take this prize and keep it well. Consider it a badge of office. Prize it. Keep developing as you are and some day it will be filled with important papers that will help shape the destiny of your people." I was so moved that I could hardly express my thanks. A rope of bloody saliva forming a shape like an undiscovered continent drooled upon the leather and I wiped it quickly away. I felt an importance that I had never dreamed. "Open it and see what's inside," I was told. My fingers a-tremble, I complied, smelling the fresh leather and finding an official-looking document inside. It was a scholarship to the state college for Negroes. My eyes filled with tears and I ran awkwardly off the floor. I was overjoyed; I did not even mind when I discovered that the gold pieces I had scrambled for were brass pocket tokens advertising a certain make of automobile. When I reached home everyone was excited. Next day the neighbors came to congratulate me. I even felt safe from grandfather, whose deathbed curse usually spoiled my triumphs. I stood beneath his photograph with my brief case in hand and smiled triumphantly into his stolid black peasant's face. It was a face that fascinated me. The eyes seemed to follow everywhere I went. That night I dreamed I was at a circus with him and that he refused to laugh at the clowns no matter what they did. Then later he told me to open my brief case and read what was inside and I did, finding an official envelope stamped with the state seal; and inside the envelope I found another and another, endlessly, and I thought I would fall of weariness. "Them's years," he said. "Now open that one." And I did and in it I found an engraved document containing a short message in letters of gold. "Read it," my grandfather said. "Out loud." "To Whom It May Concern," I intoned. "Keep This Nigger-Boy Running." I awoke with the old man's laughter ringing in my ears. (It was a dream I was to remember and dream again for many years after. But at that time I had no insight into its meaning. First I had to attend college.) Chapter 2 It was a beautiful college. The buildings were old and covered with vines and the roads gracefully winding, lined with hedges and wild roses that dazzled the eyes in the summer sun. Honeysuckle and purple wisteria hung heavy from the trees and white magnolias mixed with their scents in the bee-humming air. I've recalled it often, here in my hole: How the grass turned green in the springtime and how the mocking birds fluttered their tails and sang, how the moon shone down on the buildings, how the bell in the chapel tower rang out the precious short-lived hours; how the girls in bright summer dresses promenaded the grassy lawn. Many times, here at night, I've closed my eyes and walked along the forbidden road that winds past the girls' dormitories, past the hall with the clock in the tower, its windows warmly aglow, on down past the small white Home Economics practice cottage, whiter still in the moonlight, and on down the road with its sloping and turning, paralleling the black powerhouse with its engines droning earth-shaking rhythms in the dark, its windows red from the glow of the furnace, on to where the road became a bridge over a dry riverbed, tangled with brush and clinging vines; the bridge of rustic logs, made for trysting, but virginal and untested by lovers; on up the road, past the buildings, with the southern verandas half-a-city-block long, to the sudden forking, barren of buildings, birds, or grass, where the road turned off to the insane asylum. I always come this far and open my eyes. The spell breaks and I try to re-see the rabbits, so tame through having never been hunted, that played in the hedges and along the road. And I see the purple and silver of thistle growing between the broken glass and sunheated stones, the ants moving nervously in single file, and I turn and retrace my steps and come back to the winding road past the hospital, where at night in certain wards the gay student nurses dispensed a far more precious thing than pills to lucky boys in the know; and I come to a stop at the chapel. And then it is suddenly winter, with the moon high above and the chimes in the steeple ringing and a sonorous choir of trombones rendering a Christmas carol; and over all is a quietness and an ache as though all the world were loneliness. And I stand and listen beneath the high-hung moon, hearing "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," majestically mellow on four trombones, and then the organ. The sound floats over all, clear like the night, liquid, serene, and lonely. And I stand as for an answer and see in my mind's eye the cabins surrounded by empty fields beyond red clay roads, and beyond a certain road a river, sluggish and covered with algae more yellow than green in its stagnant stillness; past more empty fields, to the sun-shrunk shacks at the railroad crossing where the disabled veterans visited the whores, hobbling down the tracks on crutches and canes; sometimes pushing the legless, thighless one in a red wheelchair. And sometimes I listen to hear if music reaches that far, but recall only the drunken laughter of sad, sad whores. And I stand in the circle where three roads converge near the statue, where we drilled four-abreast down the smooth asphalt and pivoted and entered the chapel on Sundays, our uniforms pressed, shoes shined, minds laced up, eyes blind like those of robots to visitors and officials on the low, whitewashed reviewing stand. It's so long ago and far away that here in my invisibility I wonder if it happened at all. Then in my mind's eye I see the bronze statue of the college Founder, the cold Father symbol, his hands outstretched in the breathtaking gesture of lifting a veil that flutters in hard, metallic folds above the face of a kneeling slave; and I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding. And as I gaze, there is a rustle of wings and I see a flock of starlings flighting before me and, when I look again, the bronze face, whose empty eyes look upon a world I have never seen, runs with liquid chalk -- creating another ambiguity to puzzle my groping mind: Why is a bird-soiled statue more commanding than one that is clean? Oh, long green stretch of campus, Oh, quiet songs at dusk, Oh, moon that kissed the steeple and flooded the perfumed nights, Oh, bugle that called in the morning, Oh, drum that marched us militarily at noon -- what was real, what solid, what more than a pleasant, time-killing dream? For how could it have been real if now I am invisible? If real, why is it that I can recall in all that island of greenness no fountain but one that was broken, corroded and dry? And why does no rain fall through my recollections, sound through my memories, soak through the hard dry crust of the still so recent past? Why do I recall, instead of the odor of seed bursting in springtime, only the yellow contents of the cistern spread over the lawn's dead grass? Why? And how? How and why? The grass did grow and the green leaves appeared on the trees and filled the avenues with shadow and shade as sure as the millionaires descended from the North on Founders' Day each spring. And how they arrived! Came smiling, inspecting, encouraging, conversing in whispers, speechmaking into the wide-open ears of our black and yellow faces -- and each leaving a sizeable check as he departed. I'm convinced it was the product of a subtle magic, the alchemy of moonlight; the school a flower-studded wasteland, the rocks sunken, the dry winds hidden, the lost crickets chirping to yellow butterflies. And oh, oh, oh, those multimillionaires! THEY were all such a part of that other life that's dead that I can't remember them all. (Time was as I was, but neither that time nor that "I" are any more.) But this one I remember: near the end of my junior year I drove for him during the week he was on the campus. A face pink like St. Nicholas', topped with a shock of silk white hair. An easy, informal manner, even with me. A Bostonian, smoker of cigars, teller of polite Negro stories, shrewd banker, skilled scientist, director, philanthropist, forty years a bearer of the white man's burden, and for sixty a symbol of the Great Traditions. We were driving, the powerful motor purring and filling me with pride and anxiety. The car smelled of mints and cigar smoke. Students looked up and smiled in recognition as we rolled slowly past. I had just come from dinner and in bending forward to suppress a belch, I accidentally pressed the button on the wheel and the belch became a loud and shattering blast of the horn. Folks on the road turned and stared. "I'm awfully sorry, sir," I said, worried lest he report me to Dr. Bledsoe, the president, who would refuse to allow me to drive again. "Perfectly all right. Perfectly." "Where shall I drive you, sir?" "Let me see . . ." Through the rear-view mirror I could see him studying a wafer-thin watch, replacing it in the pocket of his checked waistcoat. His shirt was soft silk, set off with a blue-and-white polka-dotted bow tie. His manner was aristocratic, his movements dapper and suave. "It's early to go in for the next session," he said. "Suppose you just drive. Anywhere you like." "Have you seen all the campus, sir?" "Yes, I think so. I was one of the original founders, you know." "Gee! I didn't know that, sir. Then I'll have to try some of the roads." Of course I knew he was a founder, but I knew also that it was advantageous to flatter rich white folks. Perhaps he'd give me a large tip, or a suit, or a scholarship next year. "Anywhere else you like. The campus is part of my life and I know my life rather well." "Yes, sir." He was still smiling. In a moment the green campus with its vine-covered buildings was behind us. The car bounded over the road. How was the campus part of his life, I wondered. And how did one learn his life "rather well"? "Young man, you're part of a wonderful institution. It is a great dream become reality . . ." "Yes, sir," I said. "I feel as lucky to be connected with it as you no doubt do yourself. I came here years ago, when all your beautiful campus was barren ground. There were no trees, no flowers, no fertile farmland. That was years ago before you were born . . ." I listened with fascination, my eyes glued to the white line dividing the highway as my thoughts attempted to sweep back to the times of which he spoke. "Even your parents were young. Slavery was just recently past. Your people did not know in what direction to turn and, I must confess, many of mine didn't know in what direction they should turn either. But your great Founder did. He was my friend and I believed in his vision. So much so, that sometimes I don't know whether it was his vision or mine . . ." He chuckled softly, wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. "But of course it was his; I only assisted. I came down with him to see the barren land and did what I could to render assistance. And it has been my pleasant fate to return each spring and observe the changes that the years have wrought. That has been more pleasant and satisfying to me than my own work. It has been a pleasant fate, indeed." His voice was mellow and loaded with more meaning than I could fathom. As I drove, faded and yellowed pictures of the school's early days displayed in the library flashed across the screen of my mind, coming fitfully and fragmentarily to life -- photographs of men and women in wagons drawn by mule teams and oxen, dressed in black, dusty clothing, people who seemed almost without individuality, a black mob that seemed to be waiting, looking with blank faces, and among them the inevitable collection of white men and women in smiles, clear of features, striking, elegant and confident. Until now, and although I could recognize the Founder and Dr. Bledsoe among them, the figures in the photographs had never seemed actually to have been alive, but were more like signs or symbols one found on the last pages of the dictionary . . . But now I felt that I was sharing in a great work and, with the car leaping leisurely beneath the pressure of my foot, I identified myself with the rich man reminiscing on the rear seat . . . "A pleasant fate," he repeated, "and I hope yours will be as pleasant." "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," I said, pleased that he wished something pleasant for me. But at the same time I was puzzled: How could anyone's fate be pleasant? I had always thought of it as something painful. No one I knew spoke of it as pleasant -- not even Woodridge, who made us read Greek plays. We were beyond the farthest extension of the school-owned lands now and I suddenly decided to turn off the highway, down a road that seemed unfamiliar. There were no trees and the air was brilliant. Far down the road the sun glared cruelly against a tin sign nailed to a barn. A lone figure bending over a hoe on the hillside raised up wearily and waved, more a shadow against the skyline than a man. "How far have we come?" I heard over my shoulder. "Just about a mile, sir." "I don't remember this section," he said. I didn't answer. I was thinking of the first person who'd mentioned anything like fate in my presence, my grandfather. There had been nothing pleasant about it and I had tried to forget it. Now, riding here in the powerful car with this white man who was so pleased with what he called his fate, I felt a sense of dread. My grandfather would have called this treachery and I could not understand in just what way it was. Suddenly I grew guilty at the realization that the white man might have thought so too. What would he have thought? Did he know that Negroes like my grandfather had been freed during those days just before the college had been founded? As we came to a side road I saw a team of oxen hitched to a broken-down wagon, the ragged driver dozing on the seat beneath the shade of a clump of trees. "Did you see that, sir?" I asked over my shoulder. "What was it?" "The ox team, sir." "Oh! No, I can't see it for the trees," he said looking back. "It's good timber." "I'm sorry, sir. Shall I turn back?" "No, it isn't much," he said. "Go on." I drove on, remembering the lean, hungry face of the sleeping man. He was the kind of white man I feared. The brown fields swept out to the horizon. A flock of birds dipped down, circled, swung up and out as though linked by invisible strings. Waves of heat danced above the engine hood. The tires sang over the highway. Finally I overcame my timidity and asked him: "Sir, why did you become interested in the school?" "I think," he said, thoughtfully, raising his voice, "it was because I felt even as a young man that your people were somehow closely connected with my destiny. Do you understand?" "Not so clearly, sir," I said, ashamed to admit it. "You have studied Emerson, haven't you?" "Emerson, sir?" "Ralph Waldo Emerson." I was embarrassed because I hadn't. "Not yet, sir. We haven't come to him yet." "No?" he said with a note of surprise. "Well, never mind. I am a New Englander, like Emerson. You must learn about him, for he was important to your people. He had a hand in your destiny. Yes, perhaps that is what I mean. I had a feeling that your people were somehow connected with my destiny. That what happened to you was connected with what would happen to me . . ." I slowed the car, trying to understand. Through the glass I saw him gazing at the long ash of his cigar, holding it delicately in his slender, manicured fingers. "Yes, you are my fate, young man. Only you can tell me what it really is. Do you understand?" "I think I do, sir." "I mean that upon you depends the outcome of the years I have spent in helping your school. That has been my life's work, not my banking or my researches, but my first-hand organizing of human life." I saw him now, leaning toward the front seat, speaking with an intensity which had not been there before. It was hard not to turn my eyes from the highway and face him. "There is another reason, a reason more important, more passionate and, yes, even more sacred than all the others," he said, no longer seeming to see me, but speaking to himself alone. "Yes, even more sacred than all the others. A girl, my daughter. She was a being more rare, more beautiful, purer, more perfect and more delicate than the wildest dream of a poet. I could never believe her to be my own flesh and blood. Her beauty was a well-spring of purest water-of-life, and to look upon her was to drink and drink and drink again . . . She was rare, a perfect creation, a work of purest art. A delicate flower that bloomed in the liquid light of the moon. A nature not of this world, a personality like that of some biblical maiden, gracious and queenly. I found it difficult to believe her my own . . ." Suddenly he fumbled in his vest pocket and thrust something over the back of the seat, surprising me. "Here, young man, you owe much of your good fortune in attending such a school to her." I looked upon the tinted miniature framed in engraved platinum. I almost dropped it. A young woman of delicate, dreamy features looked up at me. She was very beautiful, I thought at the time, so beautiful that I did not know whether I should express admiration to the extent I felt it or merely act polite. And yet I seemed to remember her, or someone like her, in the past. I know now that it was the flowing costume of soft, flimsy material that made for the effect; today, dressed in one of the smart, well-tailored, angular, sterile, streamlined, engine-turned, air-conditioned modern outfits you see in the women's magazines, she would appear as ordinary as an expensive piece of machine-tooled jewelry and just as lifeless. Then, however, I shared something of his enthusiasm. "She was too pure for life," he said sadly; "too pure and too good and too beautiful. We were sailing together, touring the world, just she and I, when she became ill in Italy. I thought little of it at the time and we continued across the Alps. When we reached Munich she was already fading away. While we were attending an embassy party she collapsed. The best medical science in the world could not save her. It was a lonely return, a bitter voyage. I have never recovered. I have never forgiven myself. Everything I've done since her passing has been a monument to her memory." He became silent, looking with his blue eyes far beyond the field stretching away in the sun. I returned the miniature, wondering what in the world had made him open his heart to me. That was something I never did; it was dangerous. First, it was dangerous if you felt like that about anything, because then you'd never get it or something or someone would take it away from you; then it was dangerous because nobody would understand you and they'd only laugh and think you were crazy. "So you see, young man, you are involved in my life quite intimately, even though you've never seen me before. You are bound to a great dream and to a beautiful monument. If you become a good farmer, a chef, a preacher, doctor, singer, mechanic -- whatever you become, and even if you fail, you are my fate. And you must write me and tell me the outcome." I was relieved to see him smiling through the mirror. My feelings were mixed. Was he kidding me? Was he talking to me like someone in a book just to see how I would take it? Or could it be, I was almost afraid to think, that this rich man was just the tiniest bit crazy? How could I tell him his fate? He raised his head and our eyes met for an instant in the glass, then I lowered mine to the blazing white line that divided the highway. The trees along the road were thick and tall. We took a curve. Flocks of quail sailed up and over a field, brown, brown, sailing down, blending. "Will you promise to tell me my fate?" I heard. "Sir?" "Will you?" "Right now, sir?" I asked with embarrassment. "It is up to you. Now, if you like." I was silent. His voice was serious, demanding. I could think of no reply. The motor purred. An insect crushed itself against the windshield, leaving a yellow, mucous smear. "I don't know now, sir. This is only my junior year . . ." "But you'll tell me when you know?" "I'll try, sir." "Good." When I took a quick glance into the mirror he was smiling again. I wanted to ask him if being rich and famous and helping to direct the school to become what it was, wasn't enough; but I was afraid. "What do you think of my idea, young man?" he said. "I don't know, sir. I only think that you have what you're looking for. Because if I fail or leave school, it doesn't seem to me it would be your fault. Because you helped make the school what it is." "And you think that enough?" "Yes, sir. That's what the president tells us. You have yours, and you got it yourself, and we have to lift ourselves up the same way." "But that's only part of it, young man. I have wealth and a reputation and prestige -- all that is true. But your great Founder had more than that, he had tens of thousands of lives dependent upon his ideas and upon his actions. What he did affected your whole race. In a way, he had the power of a king, or in a sense, of a god. That, I've come to believe, is more important than my own work, because more depends upon you. You are important because if you fail I have failed by one individual, one defective cog; it didn't matter so much before, but now I'm growing old and it has become very important . . ." But you don't even know my name, I thought, wondering what it was all about. ". . . I suppose it is difficult for you to understand how this concerns me. But as you develop you must remember that I am dependent upon you to learn my fate. Through you and your fellow students I become, let us say, three hundred teachers, seven hundred trained mechanics, eight hundred skilled farmers, and so on. That way I can observe in terms of living personalities to what extent my money, my time and my hopes have been fruitfully invested. I also construct a living memorial to my daughter. Understand? I can see the fruits produced by the land that your great Founder has transformed from barren clay to fertile soil." His voice ceased and I saw the strands of pale blue smoke drifting across the mirror and heard the electric lighter snap back on its cable into place behind the back of the seat. "I think I understand you better, now, sir," I said. "Very good, my boy." "Shall I continue in this direction, sir?" "By all means," he said, looking out at the countryside. "I've never seen this section before. It's new territory for me." Half-consciously I followed the white line as I drove, thinking about what he had said. Then as we took a hill we were swept by a wave of scorching air and it was as though we were approaching a desert. It almost took my breath away and I leaned over and switched on the fan, hearing its sudden whirr. "Thank you," he said as a slight breeze filled the car. We were passing a collection of shacks and log cabins now, bleached white and warped by the weather. Sun-tortured shingles lay on the roofs like decks of water-soaked cards spread out to dry. The houses consisted of two square rooms joined together by a common floor and roof with a porch in between. As we passed we could look through to the fields beyond. I stopped the car at his excited command in front of a house set off from the rest. "Is that a log cabin?" It was an old cabin with its chinks filled with chalk-white clay, with bright new shingles patching its roof. Suddenly I was sorry that I had blundered down this road. I recognized the place as soon as I saw the group of children in stiff new overalls who played near a rickety fence. "Yes, sir. It is a log cabin," I said. It was the cabin of Jim Trueblood, a sharecropper who had brought disgrace upon the black community. Several months before he had caused quite a bit of outrage up at the school, and now his name was never mentioned above a whisper. Even before that he had seldom come near the campus but had been well liked as a hard worker who took good care of his family's needs, and as one who told the old stories with a sense of humor and a magic that made them come alive. He was also a good tenor singer, and sometimes when special white guests visited the school he was brought up along with the members of a country quartet to sing what the officials called "their primitive spirituals" when we assembled in the chapel on Sunday evenings. We were embarrassed by the earthy harmonies they sang, but since the visitors were awed we dared not laugh at the crude, high, plaintively animal sounds Jim Trueblood made as he led the quartet. That had all passed now with his disgrace, and what on the part of the school officials had been an attitude of contempt blunted by tolerance, had now become a contempt sharpened by hate. I didn't understand in those pre-invisible days that their hate, and mine too, was charged with fear. How all of us at the college hated the black-belt people, the "peasants," during those days! We were trying to lift them up and they, like Trueblood, did everything it seemed to pull us down. "It appears quite old," Mr. Norton said, looking across the bare, hard stretch of yard where two women dressed in new blue-and-white checked ginghams were washing clothes in an iron pot. The pot was soot-black and the feeble flames that licked its sides showed pale pink and bordered with black, like flames in mourning. Both women moved with the weary, full-fronted motions of far-gone pregnancy. "It is, sir," I said. "That one and the other two like it were built during slavery times." "You don't say! I would never have believed that they were so enduring. Since slavery times!" "That's true, sir. And the white family that owned the land when it was a big plantation still lives in town." "Yes," he said, "I know that many of the old families still survive. And individuals too, the human stock goes on, even though it degenerates. But these cabinsl" He seemed surprised and confounded. "Do you suppose those women know anything about the age and history of the place? The older one looks as though she might." "I doubt it, sir. They -- they don't seem very bright." "Bright?" he said, removing his cigar. "You mean that they wouldn't talk with me?" he asked suspiciously. "Yes, sir. That's it." "Why not?" I didn't want to explain. It made me feel ashamed, but he sensed that I knew something and pressed me. "It's not very nice, sir. But I don't think those women would talk to us." "We can explain that we're from the school. Surely they'll talk then. You may tell them who I am." "Yes, sir," I said, "but they hate us up at the school. They never come there . . ." "What!" "No, sir." "And those children along the fence down there?" "They don't either, sir." "But why?" "I don't really know, sir. Quite a few folks out this way don't, though. I guess they're too ignorant. They're not interested." "But I can't believe it." The children had stopped playing and now looked silently at the car, their arms behind their backs and their new over-sized overalls pulled tight over their little pot bellies as though they too were pregnant. "What about their men folk?" I hesitated. Why did he find this so strange? "He hates us, sir," I said. "You say he; aren't both the women married?" I caught my breath. I'd made a mistake. "The old one is, sir," I said reluctantly. "What happened to the young woman's husband?" "She doesn't have any -- That is . . . I --" "What is it, young man? Do you know these people?" "Only a little, sir. There was some talk about them up on the campus a while back." "What talk?" "Well, the young woman is the old woman's daughter . . ." "And?" "Well, sir, they say . . . you see . . . I mean they say the daughter doesn't have a husband." "Oh, I see. But that shouldn't be so strange. I understand that your people -- Never mind! Is that all?" "Well, sir . . ." "Yes, what else?" "They say that her father did it." "What!" "Yes, sir . . . that he gave her the baby." I heard the sharp intake of breath, like a toy balloon suddenly deflated. His face reddened. I was confused, feeling shame for the two women and fear that I had talked too much and offended his sensibilities. "And did anyone from the school investigate this matter?" he asked at last. "Yes, sir," I said. "What was discovered?" "That it was true -- they say." "But how does he explain his doing such a -- a -- such a monstrous thing?" He sat back in the seat, his hands grasping his knees, his knuckles bloodless. I looked away, down the heat-dazzling concrete of the highway. I wished we were back on the other side of the white line, heading back to the quiet green stretch of the campus. "It is said that the man took both his wife and his daughter?" "Yes, sir." "And that he is the father of both their children?" "Yes, sir." "No, no, no!" He sounded as though he were in great pain. I looked at him anxiously. What had happened? What had I said? "Not that! No . . ." he said, with something like horror. I ...
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