Juneteenth (8 page)

“Well, he sure knows when he says something about us,” she said.

“Yes, I guess he does. But he’s not happy in it, he’s driven.”

“I’d like to drive him the other way a bit,” she said. “I could teach him a few things.”

Hickman became silent, listening to the Senator develop his argument,
thinking, She’s partly right, they take what they need and then git. Then they start doing all right for themselves and pride tells them to deny that they ever knew us. That’s the way it’s been for a long time. Sure, but not Bliss. There’s something else, I don’t know what it was but it was something different.…

“Reveren’!” It was Sister Neal again. “What’s he talking about? I mean what’s back of it all?”

“This is how the laws are made, Sister.”

I guess that’s the way it is, he thought. Power is as power does—for power. If I knew anything for sure, would I be sitting here?

Silently he listened to the flight of the Senator’s voice and searched for echoes of the past. He had never seen the Senate in session before and was mildly surprised that he could follow most of the course of the debate. It’s mainly knowing how to manipulate and use words, he thought. And reading the papers. Yes, and knowing the basic issues, because they seldom change. He sure knows how to use the words; he never forgot that. Imagine, going up there to New England and using all that kind of old Southern stuff, our own stuff, which we never get a chance to use on a broad platform—and making it pay off. It’s probably the only thing he took with him that he’s still proud of, or simply couldn’t do without. Sister Neal’s right, some of that he’s doing is me all right. I could see it and hear it the moment she spotted it. So I guess I have helped to spread some corruption I didn’t know about. Just listen to him down there; he’s making somebody mighty uncomfortable because he’s got them caught between what they profess to believe and what they feel they can’t do without. Yes, and he’s having himself a fine time doing it. He’s almost laughing a devilish laugh in every word. Master, is that from me too? Did he ever hear me doing that?

He leaned toward Sister Neal again.

“Sister, do you follow what’s happening?”

“Some, but not quite,” she said. “He’s got no principles but he’s as smart as ever, ain’t he?”

Hickman nodded, thinking, Yes, he’s smart all right. Born with mother wit. He climbed up that high from nowhere, and now look, he’s one of the most powerful men on the floor. Lord, what a country this is. Even his name’s not his own name. Made himself from the ground up, you might say. But why this mixed-up way and all this sneering at us who never did more than wish him well? Why this craziness which makes it look sometimes like he does everything else, good and bad, clean-cut and crooked, just so he can have more opportunity to scandalize our name? Ah, but the glory of that baby boy. I could never forget it and that’s why we had to hurry here. He has to be seen, and I’m the one to see him. I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but soon’s this is over we have to find a way to get to him. I hope Janey was wrong, but any time she goes to the trouble of writing a letter herself, she just about knows what she’s talking about. So far though we’re ahead, but Lord only knows for how long. If only that young woman had told him we were trying to reach him …

He leaned forward, one elbow resting upon a knee, watching the Senator who was now in the full-throated roar of his rhetoric, head thrown back, his arms outspread—when someone crossed his path of vision.

Two rows below, a neatly dressed young man had stood up to leave, and, moving slowly toward the aisle as though still engrossed in the speech, had stopped directly in front of him, apparently to remove a handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket. Why doesn’t he move on out of the way, Hickman thought, he can blow his nose when he gets outside—when, leaning around so as to see the Senator, he saw that it was not a handkerchief in the young man’s hand, but a pistol. His body seemed to melt. Lord, can this be it? Can this
be the one? he thought, even as he saw the young man coolly bracing himself, his body slightly bent, and heard the dry, muffled popping begin. Unable to move he sat, still bent forward and to one side, seeing glass like stars from a Fourth of July rocket bursting from a huge chandelier which hung directly in the trajectory of the bullets. Lord, no, he thought, no Master, not this, staring at the dreamlike world of rushing confusion below him. Men were throwing themselves to the floor, hiding behind their high-backed chairs, dashing wildly for the exits; while he could see Bliss still standing as when the shooting began, his arms lower now, but still outspread, with a stain blooming on the front of his jacket. Then, as the full meaning of the scene came home to him, he heard Bliss give surprising voice to the old idiomatic cry,

Lord, LAWD, WHY HAST THOU …?

and staggering backwards and going down, and now he was on his own feet, moving toward the young man.

For all his size Hickman seemed suddenly everywhere at once. First stepping over the back of a bench, his great bulk rising above the paralyzed visitors like a missile, yelling, “No. NO!” to the young man, then lumbering down and reaching for the gun—only to miss it as the young man swerved aside. Then catching sight of the guards rushing, pistols in hand, through the now standing crowd, he whirled, pushing the leader off balance, back into his companion, shouting, “No, don’t kill him! Don’t kill that Boy! Bliss won’t want him killed!” as now some of his old people began to stir. But already the young man was moving toward the rail, waving a spectator away with his pistol, looking coolly about him as he continued forward; while Hickman, grasping his intention from where he struggled with one of the guards, now trying in beet-faced fury to club him
with his pistol, began yelling, “Wait, wait! Oh, my God, son—WAIT!” holding the guard, for all his years, like a grandfather quieting a boy throwing a tantrum. “WAIT!” Then calling the strange name, “Severen, wait,” and saw the young man throwing him a puzzled, questioning look, then climb over the rail to plunge deliberately headfirst to the floor below. Pushing the guard from him now, Hickman called a last despairing “Wait!” as he stumbled to the rail to stand there crying down as the group of old people quickly surrounded him, the old women pushing and striking at the angry guards with their handbags as they sought to protect him.

For a moment he continued to cry, grasping the rail with his hands and staring down to where the Senator lay twisting upon the dais beside an upturned chair. Then suddenly, in the midst of all the screaming, the shrilling of whistles, and the dry ineffectual banging of the chairman’s gavel, he began to sing.

Even his followers were startled. The voice was big and resonant with a grief so striking that the crowd was halted in mid-panic, turning their wide-eyed faces up to where it soared forth to fill the great room with the sound of his astounding anguish. There he stood in the gallery above them, past the swinging chandelier, his white head towering over his clustered flock, tears gleaming bright against the darkness of his face, creating with his voice an atmosphere of bafflement and mystery no less outrageous than the shooting which had released it.

“Oh, Lord,” he sang, “why hast thou taken our Bliss, Lord? Why now our awful secret son, Lord?… Snatched down our poor bewildered foundling, Lord? LORD, LORD, why hast thou …?”

Whereupon, seeing the Senator trying to lift himself up and falling heavily back, he called out: “Bliss! You were our last hope, Bliss; now Lord have mercy on this dying land!”

As the great voice died away it was as though all had been stunned by a hammer and there was only the creaking sound made by the
serenely swinging chandelier. Then the guards moved, and as the old ladies turned to confront them, Hickman called: “No, it’s all right. We’ll go. Why would we want to stay here? We’ll go wherever they say.”

They were rushed to the Department of Justice for questioning, but before this could begin, the Senator, who was found to be still alive upon his arrival at the hospital, began calling for Hickman in his delirium. He was calling for him when he entered the operating room and was still calling for him the moment he emerged from the anesthetic, insisting, for all his weakness, that the old man be brought to his room. Against the will of the doctors this was done, the old man arriving mute and with the eyes of one in a trance. Following the Senator’s insistence that he be allowed to stay with him through the crisis, he was given a chair beside the bed and sank his great bulk into it without a word, staring listlessly at the Senator, who lay on the bed in one of his frequent spells of unconsciousness. Once he asked a young nurse for a glass of water, but beyond thanking her politely, he made no further comment, offered no explanation for his odd presence in the hospital room.

CHAPTER 4

When the Senator awoke he did not know if it was the shape of a man which he saw beyond him, or simply a shadow. Nor did he know if he was awake or dreaming. He seemed to move in a region of grays which revolved slowly before his eyes, ceaselessly transforming shadow and substance, dream and reality. And yet there was still the constant, unyielding darkness which seemed to speak to him silently words which he dreaded to hear. Yet he wished to touch it, but even the idea of movement brought pain and set his mind to wandering. It hurts here, he thought, and here; the light comes and goes behind my eyes. It hurts here and here and there and there. If only the throbbing would cease. Who … why … what … 
LORD, LORD, LORD WHY HAST THOU …
Then someone seemed to call to him from a long way off,
Senator, do you hear me?
Did the Senator hear? Who? Was the Senator here? And yes, he did, very clearly, yes. And he was. Yes, he was. Then another voice seemed to call,
Bliss?
And he thought,
Is Bliss here? Perhaps. But when he tried to answer he seemed to dream, to remember, to recall to himself an uneasy dream.

It was a bright day and Daddy Hickman said, Come on out here, Bliss; I got something to show you. And I went with him through the garden past the apple trees on under the grape arbor to the barn. And there it was, sitting up on two short sawhorses.

Look at that, he said.

It was some kind of long, narrow box. I didn’t like it.

I said, What is it?

It’s for the service. For the revivals. Remember me and Deacon Wilhite talking about it?

No, sir.

Sho, you remember. It’s for you to come up out of. You’re going to be resurrected so the sinners can find life everlasting. Bliss, a preacher is a man who carries God’s load. And that’s the whole earth, Bliss boy. The whole earth and all the people. And he smiled.

Oh! I said. I remembered. But before it hadn’t meant too much. Since then, Juney had gone away and I had seen one. Juney’s was pine painted black, without curves. This was fancy, all carved and covered with white cloth. It seemed to roll and grow beneath my eyes, while he held his belly in his hands, thumbs in trousers top, his great shoes creaking as he walked around it, proudly.

How you like it?

He was examining the lid, swinging it smoothly up and down with his hand. I couldn’t see how it was put together. It seemed to be all white cloth bleeding into pink and pink into white again, over the scrolls. Then he let the lid down again and I could see two angels carved in its center. They were blowing long-belled valveless trumpets as they went flying. Behind them, in the egg-shaped space
in which they trumpeted and flew, were carved clouds. Their eyes looked down. I said,

Is it for me?

Sho, didn’t I tell you? We get it all worked out the way we want it and then, sinners, watch out!

Suddenly I could feel my fingers turn cold at the tips.

But why is it so big, I said. I’m not that tall. In fact, I’m pretty little for my age.

Yeah, but this one has got to last, Bliss. Can’t be always buying you one of these like I do when you scuff out your shoes or bust out the seat of your britches.

But my feet won’t even touch the end, I said. I hadn’t looked inside.

Yeah, but in a few years they will. By the time your voice starts to change your feet will be pushing out one end and your head out the other. I don’t want even to have to think about another one before then.

But couldn’t you get a littler one?

You mean “smaller”—but that’s
just
what we don’t want, Bliss. If it’s too small, they won’t notice it or think of it as applying to them. If it’s too big, they’ll laugh when you come rising up. No, Bliss, it’s got to be this size. They have to see it and feel it for what it is, not take it for a toy like one of those little tin wagons or autos. Down there in Mexico one time I saw them selling sugar candy made in this shape, but ain’t no use in trying to sugar-coat it. No, sir, Bliss. They have got to see it and know what they’re seeing is where they’ve all got to end up. Bliss, that there sitting right there on those sawhorses is everybody’s last clean shirt, as the old saying goes. And they’ve got to realize that when that sickle starts to cut its swath, it don’t play no favorites.
Everybody
goes when that wagon comes, Bliss; babies and grandmaws too, ’cause there simply ain’t no exceptions
made. Death is like Justice is
supposed
to be. So you see, Bliss, it’s got to be of a certain size. Hop in there and let’s see how it fits.…