Chapter 25

Chapter 25

When I reached Morningside the shooting sounded like a distant celebration of the Fourth of July, and I hurried forward. At St. Nicholas the street lights were out. A thunderous sound arose and I saw four men running toward me pushing something that jarred the walk. It was a safe.
"Say," I began.
"Get the hell out the way!"
I leaped aside, into the street, and there was a sudden and brilliant suspension of time, like the interval between the last ax stroke and the felling of a tall tree, in which there had been a loud noise followed by a loud silence. Then I was aware of figures crouching in doorways and along the curb; then time burst and I was down in the street, conscious but unable to rise, struggling against the street and seeing the flashes as the guns went off back at the corner of the avenue, aware to my left of the men still speeding the rumbling safe along the walk as back up the street, behind me, two policemen, almost invisible in black shirts, thrust flaming pistols before them. One of the safe rollers pitched forward, and farther away, past the corner, a bullet struck an auto tire, the released air shrieking like a huge animal in agony. I rolled, flopping around, willing myself to crawl closer to the curb but unable, feeling a sudden wet warmth upon my face and seeing the safe shooting wildly into the intersection and the men rounding the corner into the dark, pounding, gone; gone now, as the skittering safe bounded off at a tangent, shot into the intersection and lodged in the third rail and sent up a curtain of sparks that lit up the block like a blue dream; a dream I was dreaming and through which I could see the cops braced as on a target range, feet forward, free arms akimbo, firing with deliberate aim.
"Get hold of Emergency!" one of them called, and I saw them turn and disappear where the dull glint of trolley rails faded off into the dark.
Suddenly the block leaped alive. Men who seemed to rise up out of the sidewalks were rushing into the store fronts above me, their voices rising excitedly. And now the blood was in my face and I could move, getting to my knees as someone out of the crowd was helping me to stand.
"You hurt, daddy?"
"Some—I don't know —" I couldn't quite see them.
"Damn! He's got a hole in his head!" a voice said.
A light flashed in my face, came close. I felt a hard hand upon my skull and moved away.
"Hell, it's just a nick," a voice said. "One them forty-fives hit your little finger you got to go down!"
"Well, this one over here is gone down for the last time," someone called from the walk. "They got him clean."
I wiped my face, my head ringing. Something was missing.
"Here, buddy, this yours?"
It was my brief case, extended to me by its handles. I seized it with sudden panic, as though something infinitely precious had almost been lost to me.
"Thanks," I said, peering into their dim, blue-tinted features. I looked at the dead man. He lay face forward, the crowd working around him. I realized suddenly that it might have been me huddled there, feeling too that I had seen him there before, in the bright light of noon, long ago . . . how long? Knew his name, I thought, and suddenly my knees flowed forward. I sat there, my fist that gripped the brief case bruising against the street, my head slumped forward. They were going around me.
"Get off my foot, man," I heard. "Quit shoving. There's plenty for everybody."
There was something I had to do and I knew that my forgetfulness wasn't real, as one knows that the forgotten details of certain dreams are not truly forgotten but evaded. I knew, and in my mind I was trying to reach through the gray veil that now seemed to hang behind my eyes as opaquely as the blue curtain that screened the street beyond the safe. The dizziness left and I managed to stand, holding onto my brief case, pressing a handkerchief to my head. Up the street there sounded the crashing of huge sheets of glass and through the blue mysteriousness of the dark the walks shimmered like shattered mirrors. All the street's signs were dead, all the day sounds had lost their stable meaning. Somewhere a burglar alarm went off, a meaningless blangy sound, followed by the joyful shouts of looters.
"Come on," someone called nearby.
"Let's go, buddy," the man who had helped me said. He took my arm, a thin man who carried a large cloth bag slung over his shoulder.
"The shape you in wouldn't do to leave you round here," he said. "You act like you drunk."
"Go where?" I said.
"Where? Hell, man. Everywhere. We git to moving, no telling where we might go—Hey, Dupre!" he called.
"Say, man—Goddam! Don't be calling my name so loud," a voice answered. "Here, I am over here, gitting me some work shirts."
"Git some for me, Du," he said.
"All right, but don't think I'm your papa," the answer came.
I looked at the thin man, feeling a surge of friendship. He didn't know me, his help was disinterested . . .
"Hey, Du," he called, "we go'n do it?"
"Hell yes, soon as I git me these shirts."
The crowd was working in and out of the stores like ants around spilled sugar. From time to time there came the crash of glass, shots; fire trucks in distant streets.
"How you feel?" the man said.
"Still fuzzy," I said, "and weak."
"Le's see if it's stopped bleeding. Yeah, you'll be all right."
I saw him vaguely though his voice came clear.
"Sure," I said.
"Man, you lucky you ain't dead. These sonsabitches is really shooting now," he said. "Over on Lenox they was aiming up in the air. If I could find me a rifle, I'd show 'em! Here, take you a drink of this good Scotch," he said, taking a quart bottle from a hip pocket. "I got me a whole case stashed what I got from a liquor store over there. Over there all you got to do is breathe, and you drunk, man. Drunk! Hundred proof bonded whiskey flowing all in the gutters."
I took a drink, shuddering as the whiskey went down but thankful for the shock it gave me. There was a bursting, tearing movement of people around me, dark figures in a blue glow.
"Look at them take it away," he said, looking into the dark action of the crowd. "Me, I'm tired. Was you over on Lenox?"
"No," I said, seeing a woman moving slowly past with a row of about a dozen dressed chickens suspended by their necks from the handle of a new straw broom . . .
"Hell, you ought to see it, man. Everything is tore up. By now the womens is picking it clean. I saw one ole woman with a whole side of a cow on her back. Man, she was 'bout bent bowlegged trying to make it home—Here come Dupre now," he said, breaking off.
I saw a little hard man come out of the crowd carrying several boxes. He wore three hats upon his head, and several pairs of suspenders flopped about his shoulders, and now as he came toward us I saw that he wore a pair of gleaming new rubber hip boots. His pockets bulged and over his shoulder he carried a cloth sack that swung heavily behind him.
"Damn, Dupre," my friend said, pointing to his head, "you got one of them for me? What kind is they?"
Dupre stopped and looked at him. "With all them hats in there and I'm going to come out with anything but a Dobbs? Man, are you mad? All them new, pretty-colored Dobbs? Come on, let's get going before the cops git back. Damn, look at that thing blaze!"
I looked toward the curtain of blue fire, through which vague figures toiled. Dupre called out and several men left the crowd and joined us in the street. We moved off, my friend (Scofield, the others called him) leading me along. My head throbbed, still bled.
"Looks like you got you some loot too," he said, pointing to my brief case.
"Not much," I said, thinking, loot? Loot? And suddenly I knew why it was heavy, remembering Mary's broken bank and the coins; and now I found myself opening the brief case and dropping all my papers—my Brotherhood identification, the anonymous letter, along with Clifton's doll—into it.
"Fill it up, man. Don't you be bashful. You wait till we tackle one of these pawnshops. That Du's got him a cotton-picking sack fulla stuff. He could go into business."
"Well, I'll be damn," a man on the other side of me said. "I thought that was a cotton sack. Where'd he get that thing?"
"He brought it with him when he come North," Scofield said. "Du swears that when he goes back he'll have it full of ten-dollar bills. Hell, after tonight he'll need him a warehouse for all the stuff he's got. You fill that brief case, buddy. Get yourself something!"
"No," I said, "I've enough in it already." And now I remembered very clearly where I'd started out for but could not leave them.
"Maybe you right," Scofield said. "How I know, you might have it full of diamonds or something. A man oughtn't to be greedy. Though it's time something like this happened."
We moved along. Should I leave, get on to the district? Where were they, at the birthday celebration?
"How did all this get started?" I said.
Scofield seemed surprised. "Damn if I know, man. A cop shot a woman or something."
Another man moved close to us as somewhere a piece of heavy steel rang down.
"Hell, that wasn't what started it," he said. "It was that fellow, what's his name . . . ?"
"Who?" I said. "What's his name?"
"That young guy!"
"You know, everybody's mad about it . . ."
Clifton, I thought. It's for Clifton. A night for Clifton.
"Aw man, don't tell me," Scofield said. "Didn't I see it with my own eyes? About eight o'clock down on Lenox and 123rd this paddy slapped a kid for grabbing a Baby Ruth and the kid's mama took it up and then the paddy slapped her and that's when hell broke loose."
"You were there?" I said.
"Same's I'm here. Some fellow said the kid made the paddy mad by grabbing a candy named after a white woman."
"Damn if that's the way I heard it," another man said. "When I come up they said a white woman set it oft by trying to take a black gal's man."
"Damn who started it," Dupre said. "All I want is for it to last a while."
"It was a white gal, all right, but that wasn't the way it was. She was drunk —" another voice said.
But it couldn't have been Sybil, I thought; it had already started.
"You wahn know who started it?" a man holding a pair of binoculars called from the window of a pawnshop. "You wahn really to know?"
"Sure," I said.
"Well, you don't need to go no further. It was started by that great leader, Ras the Destroyer!"
"That monkey-chaser?" someone said.
"Listen, bahstard!"
"Don't nobody know how it started," Dupre said.
"Somebody has to know," I said.
Scofield held his whiskey toward me. I refused it.
"Hell, man, it just exploded. These is dog days," he said.
"Dog days?"
"Sho, this hot weather."
"I tell you they mad over what happen to that young fellow, what's-his-name . . ."
We were passing a building now and I heard a voice calling frantically, "Colored store! Colored store!"
"Then put up a sign, motherfouler," a voice said. "You probably rotten as the others."
"Listen at the bastard. For one time in his life he's glad to be colored," Scofield said.
"Colored store," the voice went on automatically.
"Hey! You sho you ain't got some white blood?"
"No, sir!" the voice said.
"Should I bust him, man?"
"For what? He ain't got a damn thing. Let the motherfouler alone."
A few doors away we came to a hardware store. "This is the first stop, men," Dupre said.
"What happens now?" I said.
"Who you?" he said, cocking his thrice-hatted head.
"Nobody, just one of the boys —" I began.
"You sho you ain't somebody I know?"
"I'm pretty sure," I said.
"He's all right, Du," said Scofield. "Them cops shot him."
Dupre looked at me and kicked something—a pound of butter, sending it smearing across the hot street. "We fixing to do something what needs to be done," he said. "First we gets a flashlight for everybody . . . And let's have some organization, y'all. Don't everybody be running over everybody else. Come on!"
"Come on in, buddy," Scofield said.
I felt no need to lead or leave them; was glad to follow; was gripped by a need to see where and to what they would lead. And all the time the thought that I should go to the district was with me. We went inside the store, into the dark glinting with metal. They moved carefully, and I could hear them searching, sweeping objects to the floor. The cash register rang.
"Here some flashlights over here," someone called.
"How many?" Dupre said.
"Plenty, man."
"Okay, pass out one to everybody. They got batteries?"
"Naw, but there's plenty them too, 'bout a dozen boxes."
"Okay, give me one with batteries so I can find the buckets. Then every man get him a light."
"Here some buckets over here," Scofield said.
"Then all we got to find is where he keeps the oil."
"Oil?" I said.
"Coal oil, man. And hey, y'all," he called, '"don't nobody be smoking in here."
I stood beside Scofield listening to the noise as he took a stack of zinc buckets and passed them out. Now the store leaped alive with flashing lights and flickering shadows.
"Keep them lights down on the floor," Dupre called. "No use letting folks see who we are. Now when you get your buckets line up and let me fill 'em."
"Listen to ole Du lay it down—he's a bitch, ain't he, buddy? He always liked to lead things. And always leading me into trouble."
"What are we getting ready to do?" I said.
"You'll see," Dupre said. "Hey, you over there. Come on from behind that counter and take this bucket. Don't you see ain't nothing in that cash register, that if it was I'd have it myself?"
Suddenly the banging of buckets ceased. We moved into the back room. By the light of a flash I could see a row of fuel drums mounted on racks. Dupre stood before them in his new hip boots and filled each bucket with oil. We moved in slow order. Our buckets filled, we filed out into the street. I stood there in the dark feeling a rising excitement as their voices played around me. What was the meaning of it all? What should I think of it, do about it?
"With this stuff," Dupre said, "we better walk in the middle of the street. It's just down around the corner."
Then as we moved off a group of boys ran among us and the men started using their lights, revealing darting figures in blonde wigs, the tails of their stolen dress coats flying. Behind them in hot pursuit came a gang armed with dummy rifles taken from an Army & Navy Store. I laughed with the others, thinking: A holy holiday for Clifton.
"Put out them lights!" Dupre commanded.
Behind us came the sound of screams, laughter; ahead the footfalls of the running boys, distant fire trucks, shooting, and in the quiet intervals, the steady filtering of shattered glass. I could smell the kerosene as it sloshed from the buckets and slapped against the street.
Suddenly Scofield grabbed my arm. "Good God, look-a-yonder!"
And I saw a crowd of men running up pulling a Borden's milk wagon, on top of which, surrounded by a row of railroad flares, a huge woman in a gingham pinafore sat drinking beer from a barrel which sat before her. The men would run furiously a few paces and stop, resting between the shafts, run a few paces and rest, shouting and laughing and drinking from a jug, as she on top threw back her head and shouted passionately in a full-throated voice of blues singer's timbre:

If it hadn't been for the referee,
Joe Louis woulda killed
Jim Jefferie
Free beer!!

— sloshing the dipper of beer around.
We stepped aside, amazed, as she bowed graciously from side to side like a tipsy fat lady in a circus parade, the dipper like a gravy spoon in her enormous hand. Then she laughed and drank deeply while reaching over nonchalantly with her free hand to send quart after quart ot milk crashing into the street. And all the time the men running with the wagon over the debris. Around me there were shouts of laughter and disapproval.
"Somebody better stop them fools," Scofield said in outrage. "That's what I call taking things too far. Goddam, how the hell they going to get her down from there after she gits fulla beer? Somebody answer me that. How they going to get her down? 'Round here throwing away all that good milk!"
The big woman left me unnerved. Milk and beer—I felt sad, watching the wagon careen dangerously as they went around a corner. We went on, avoiding the broken bottles as now the spilling kerosene splashed into the pale spilt milk. How much has happened? Why was I torn? We moved around a corner. My head still ached.
Scofield touched my arm. "Here we is," he said.
We had come to a huge tenement building.
"Where are we?" I said.
"This the place where most of us live," he said. "Come on."
So that was it, the meaning of the kerosene. I couldn't believe it, couldn't believe they had the nerve. All the windows seemed empty. They'd blacked it out themselves. I saw now only by flash or flame.
"Where will you live?" I said, looking up, up.
"You call this living?" Scofield said. "It's the only way to git rid of it, man . . ."
I looked for hesitation in their vague forms. They stood looking at the building rising above us, the liquid dark of the oil simmering dully in the stray flecks of light that struck their pails, bent forward, their shoulders bowed. None said "no," by word or stance. And in the dark windows and on the roofs above I could now discern the forms of women and children.
Dupre moved toward the building.
"Now look ahere, y'all," he said, his triple-hatted head showing grotesquely atop the stoop. "I wants all the women and chillun and the old and the sick folks brought out. And when you takes your buckets up the stairs I wants you to go clean to the top. I mean the top! And when you git there I want you to start using your flashlights in every room to make sure nobody gits left behind, then when you git 'em out start splashing coal oil. Then when you git it splashed I'm going to holler, and when I holler three times I want you to light them matches and git. After that it's every tub on its own black bottom!"
It didn't occur to me to interfere, or to question . . . They had a plan. Already I could see the women and children coming down the steps. A child was crying. And suddenly everyone paused, turning, looking off into the dark. Somewhere nearby an incongruous sound shook the dark, an air hammer pounding like a machine gun. They paused with the sensitivity of grazing deer, then returned to their work, the women and children once more moving.
"That's right, y'all. You ladies move on up the street to the folks you going to stay with," Dupre said. "And keep holt them kids!"
Someone pounded my back and I swung around, seeing a woman push past me and climb up to catch Dupre's arm, their two figures seeming to blend as her voice arose, thin, vibrant and desperate.
"Please, Dupre," she said, "please. You know my time's almost here . . . you know it is. If you do it now, where am I going to go?"
Dupre pulled away and rose to a higher step. He looked down at her, shaking his thrice-hatted head. "Now git on out the way, Lottie," he said patiently. "Why you have to start this now? We done been all over it and you know I ain't go'n change. And lissen here, the resta y'all," he said, reaching into the top of his hip boot and producing a nickel-plated revolver and waving it around, "don't think they's going to be any mind-changing either. And I don't aim for no arguments neither."
"You goddam right, Dupre. We wid you!"
"My kid died from the t-bees in that deathtrap, but I bet a man ain't no more go'n be born in there," he said. "So now, Lottie, you go on up the street and let us mens git going."
She stood back, crying. I looked at her, in house shoes, her breasts turgid, her belly heavy and high. In the crowd, women's hands took her away, her large liquid eyes turned for a second toward the man in the rubber boots.
What type of man is he, what would Jack say of him? Jack. Jack! And where was he in this?
"Let's go, buddy," Scofield said, nudging me. I followed him, filled with a sense of Jack's outrageous unreality. We went in, up the stairs, flashing our lights. Ahead I saw Dupre moving. He was a type of man nothing in my life had taught me to see, to understand, or respect, a man outside the scheme till now. We entered rooms littered with the signs of swift emptying. It was hot, close.
"This here's my own apartment," Scofield said. "And ain't the bedbugs going to get a surprise!"
We slopped the kerosene about, upon an old mattress, along the floor; then moved into the hall, using the flashlights. From all through the building came the sounds of footsteps, of splashing oil, the occasional prayerful protest of some old one being forced to leave. The men worked in silence now, like moles deep in the earth. Time seemed to hold. No one laughed. Then from below came Dupre's' voice.
"Okay, mens. We got everybody out. Now starting with the top floor I want you to start striking matches. Be careful and don't set yourself on fire . . ."
There was still some kerosene left in Scofield's bucket and I saw him pick up a rag and drop it in; then came the sputtering of a match and I saw the room leap to flame. The heat flared up and I backed away. He stood there silhouetted against the red flare, looking into the flames, shouting.
"Goddam you rotten sonsabitches. You didn't think I'd do it but there it is. You wouldn't fix it up. Now see how you like it."
"Let's go," I said.
Below us, men shot downstairs five and six steps at a time, moving in the weird light of flash and flame in long, dream-bounds. On each floor as I passed, smoke and flame arose. And now I was seized with a fierce sense of exaltation. They've done it, I thought. They organized it and carried it through alone; the decision their own and their own action. Capable of their own action . . .
There came a thunder of footfalls above me, someone calling, "Keep going man, it's hell upstairs. Somebody done opened the door to the roof and them flames is leaping."
"Come on," Scofield said.
I moved, feeling something slip and was halfway down the next flight before realizing that my brief case was gone. For a second I hesitated, but I'd had it too long to leave it now.
"Come on, buddy," Scofield called, "we caint be fooling around."
"In a second," I said.
Men were shooting past. I bent over, holding on to the handrail and shouldered my way back up the stairs, using my flash along each step, back slowly, finding it, an oily footstep embedded with crushed pieces of plaster showing upon its leather side; getting it now and turning to bound down again. The oil won't come off easily, I thought with a pang. But this was it, what I had known was coming around the dark corner of my mind, had known and tried to tell the committee and which they had ignored. I plunged down, shaking with fierce excitement.
At the landing I saw a bucket half full of kerosene and seized it, flinging it impulsively into a burning room. A huge puff of smoke-fringed flame filled the doorway, licking outward toward me. I ran, choking and coughing as I plunged. They did it themselves, I thought, holding my breath—planned it, organized it, applied the flame.
I burst into the air and the exploding sounds of the night, and I did not know if the voice was that of a man, woman or child, but for a moment I stood on the stoop with the red doorway behind me and heard the voice call me by my Brotherhood name.
It was as though I had been aroused from sleep and for an instant I stood there looking, listening to the voice almost lost in the clamour of shouts, screams, burglar alarms and sirens.
"Brother, ain't it wonderful," it called. "You said you would lead us, you really said it . . ."
I went down into the street, going slowly but filled with a feverish inner need to be away from that voice. Where had Scofield gone?
Most of their eyes, white in the flame-flushed dark, looked toward the building.
But now I heard someone say, "Woman, who you say that is?" And she proudly repeated my name.
"Where he go? Get him, mahn, Ras wahnt him!"
I went into the crowd, walking slowly, smoothly into the dark crowd, the whole surface of my skin alert, my back chilled, looking, listening to those moving with a heaving and sweating and a burr of talk around me and aware that now that I wanted to see them, needed to see them, I could not; feeling them, a dark mass in motion on a dark night, a black river ripping through a black land; and Ras or Tarp could move beside me and I wouldn't know. I was one with the mass, moving down the littered street over the puddles of oil and milk, my personality blasted. Then I was in the next block, dodging in and out, hearing them somewhere in the crowd behind me; moving on through the sound of sirens and burglar alarms to be swept into a swifter crowd and pushed along, half-running, half-walking, trying to see behind me and wondering where the others had gone. There was shooting back there now, and on either side of me they were throwing garbage cans, bricks and pieces of metal into plate glass windows. I moved, feeling as though a huge force was on the point of bursting. Shouldering my way to the side I stood in a doorway and watched them move, feeling a certain vindication as now I thought of the message that had brought me here. Who had called, one of the district members or someone from Jack's birthday celebration? Who wanted me at the district after it was too late? Very well, I'd go there now. I'd see what the master minds thought now. Where were they anyway, and what profound conclusions were they drawing? What ex post facto lessons of history? And that crash over the telephone, had that been the beginning, or had Jack simply dropped his eye? I laughed drunkenly, the eruption paining my head.
Suddenly the shooting ceased and in the silence there was the sound of voices, footfalls, labor.
"Hey, buddy," somebody said beside me, "where you going?" It was Scofield.
"It's either run or get knocked down," I said. "I thought you were still back there."
"I cut out, man. A building two doors away started to burn and they had to git the fire department . . . Damn! wasn't for this noise I'd swear those bullets was mosquitoes."
"Watch out!" I warned, pulling him away from where a man lay propped against a post, tightening a tourniquet around his gashed arm.
Scofield flashed his light and for a second I saw the black man, his face gray with shock, watching the jetting pulsing of his blood spurting into the street. Then, compelled, I reached down and twisted the tourniquet, feeling the blood warm upon my hand, seeing the pulsing cease.
"You done stopped it," a young man said, looking down.
"Here," I said, "you take it, hold it tight. Get him to a doctor."
"Ain't you a doctor?"
"Me?" I said. "Me? Are you crazy? If you want him to live, get him away from here."
"Albert done gone for one," the boy said. "But I thought you was one. You —"
"No," I said, looking at my bloody hands, "no, not me. You hold it tight until the doctor comes. I couldn't cure a headache."
I stood wiping my hands against the brief case, looking down at the big man, his back resting against the post with his eyes closed, the boy holding desperately to the tourniquet made of what had been a bright new tie.
"Come on," I said.
"Say," Scofield said when we were past, "wasn't that you that woman was calling brother back yonder?"
"Brother? No, it must have been some other guy."
"You know, man, I think I seen you before somewhere. You ever was in Memphis . . . ? Say, look what's coming," he said, pointing, and I looked through the dark to see a squad of white-helmeted policemen charge forward and break for shelter as a rain of bricks showered down from the building tops. Some of the white helmets, racing for the doorways, turned to fire, and I heard Scofield grunt and go down and I dropped beside him, seeing the red burst of fire and hearing the shrill scream, like an arching dive, curving from above to end in a crunching thud in the street. It was as though it landed in my stomach, sickening me, and I crouched, looking down past Scofield, who lay just ahead of me, to see the dark crushed form from the roof; and farther away, the body of a cop, his helmet making a small white luminous mound in the dark.
I moved now to see whether Scofield was hit, just as he squirmed around and cursed at the cops who were trying to rescue the one who was down, his voice furious, as he stretched full length firing away with a nickel-plated pistol like that Dupre had waved.
"Git the hell down, man," he yelled over his shoulder. "I been wanting to blast 'em a long time."
"No, not with that thing," I said. "Let's get out of here."
"Hell, man, I can shoot this thing," he said.
I rolled behind a pile of baskets filled with rotting chickens now, and to my left, upon the littered curb, a woman and man crouched behind an upturned delivery cart.
"Dehart," she said, "let's get up on the hill, Dehart. Up with the respectable people!"
"Hill, hell! We stay right here," the man said. "This thing's just starting. If it becomes a sho 'nough race riot I want to be here where there'll be some fighting back."
The words struck like bullets fired close range, blasting my satisfaction to earth. It was as though the uttered word had given meaning to the night, almost as though it had created it, brought it into being in the instant his breath vibrated small against the loud, riotous air. And in defining, in giving organization to the fury, it seemed to spin me around, and in my mind I was looking backward over the days since Clifton's death . . . Could this be the answer, could this be what the committee had planned, the answer to why they'd surrendered our influence to Ras? Suddenly I heard the hoarse explosion of a shotgun, and looked past Scofield's glinting pistol to the huddled form from the roof. It was suicide, without guns it was suicide, and not even the pawnshops here had guns for sale; and yet I knew with a shattering dread that the uproar which for the moment marked primarily the crash of men against things—against stores, markets—could swiftly become the crash of men against men and with most of the guns and numbers on the other side. I could see it now, see it clearly and in growing magnitude. It was not suicide, but murder. The committee had planned it. And I had helped, had been a tool. A tool just at the very moment I had thought myself free. By pretending to agree I had indeed agreed, had made myself responsible for that huddled form lighted by flame and gunfire in the street, and all the others whom now the night was making ripe for death.
The brief case swung heavy against my leg as I ran, going away, leaving Scofield cursing his lack of bullets behind me, running wildly and swinging the brief case hard against the head of a dog that leaped at me out of the crowd, sending him yelping away. To my right lay a quiet residential street with trees, and I entered it, going toward Seventh Avenue, toward the district, filled now with horror and hatred. They'll pay, they'll pay, I thought. They'll pay!
The street lay dead quiet in the light of the lately risen moon, the gunfire thin and for a moment, distant. The rioting seemed in another world. For a moment I paused beneath a low, thickly leaved tree, looking down the well-kept doily-shadowed walks past the silent houses. It was as though the tenants had vanished, leaving the houses silent with all windows shaded, refugees from a rising flood. Then I heard the single footfalls coming doggedly toward me in the night, an eerie slapping sound followed by a precise and hallucinated cry —

"Time's flying
Souls dying
The coming of the Lord
Draweth niiiiigh!"

— as though he had run for days, for years. He trotted past where I stood beneath the tree, his bare feet slapping the walk in the silence, going for a few feet and then the high, hallucinated cry beginning again.
I ran into the avenue where in the light of a flaming liquor store I saw three old women scurrying toward me with raised skirts loaded with canned goods.
"I can't stop it just yet, but have mercy, Lord," one of them said. "Do, Jesus, do, sweet Jesus . . ."
I moved ahead, the fumes of alcohol and burning tar in my nostrils. Down the avenue to my left a single street lamp still glowed where the long block was intersected on my right by a street, and I could see a crowd rushing a store that faced the intersection, moving in, and a fusillade of canned goods, salami, liverwurst, hogsheads and chitterlings belching out to those outside and a bag of flour bursting white upon them; as now out of the dark of the intersecting street two mounted policemen came at a gallop, heaving huge and heavy-hooved, charging straight into the swarming mass. And I could see the great forward lunge of the horses and the crowd breaking and rolling back like a wave, back, and screaming and cursing, and some laughing—back and around and out into the avenue, stumbling and pushing, as the horses, heads high and bits froth-flecked, went over the curb to land stiff-legged and slide over the cleared walk as upon ice skates and past, carried by the force of the charge, sideways now, legs stiff, sparks flying, to where another crowd looted another store. And my heart tightened as the first crowd swung imperturbably back to their looting with derisive cries, like sandpipers swinging around to glean the shore after a furious wave's recession.
Cursing Jack and the Brotherhood I moved around a steel grill torn from the front of a pawnshop, seeing the troopers galloping back and the riders lifting the horses to charge again, grim and skillful in white steel helmets, and the charge beginning. This time a man went down and I saw a woman swinging a gleaming frying pan hard against the horse's rump and the horse neighing and beginning to plunge. They'll pay, I thought, they'll pay. They came toward me as I ran, a crowd of men and women carrying cases of beer, cheese, chains of linked sausage, watermelons, sacks of sugar, hams, cornmeal, fuel lamps. If only it could stop right here, here; here before the others came with their guns. I ran.
There was no firing. But when, I thought, how long before it starts?
"Git a side of bacon, Joe," a woman called. "Git a side of bacon, Joe, git Wilson's."
"Lord, Lord, Lord," a dark voice called from the dark.
I went on, plunged in a sense of painful isolation as I reached 125th Street and started east. A squad of mounted police galloped past. Men with sub-machine guns were guarding a bank and a large jewelry store. I moved out to the center of the street, running down the trolley rails.
The moon was high now and before me the shattered glass glittered in the street like the water of a flooded river upon the surface of which I ran as in a dream, avoiding by fate alone the distorted objects washed away by the flood. Then suddenly I seemed to sink, sucked under: Ahead of me the body hung, white, naked, and horribly feminine from a lamppost. I felt myself spin around with horror and it was as though I had turned some nightmarish somersault. I whirled, still moving by reflex, back-tracking and stopped and now there was another and another, seven-all hanging before a gutted storefront. I stumbled, hearing the cracking of bones underfoot and saw a physician's skeleton shattered on the street, the skull rolling away from the backbone, as I steadied long enough to notice the unnatural stiffness of those hanging above me. They were mannequins—"Dummies!" I said aloud. Hairless, bald and sterilely feminine. And I recalled the boys in the blonde wigs, expecting the relief of laughter, but suddenly was more devastated by the humor than by the horror. But are they unreal, I thought; are they? What if one, even one is real—is . . . Sybil? I hugged my brief case, backing away, and ran . . .


THEY moved in a tight-knit order, carrying sticks and clubs, shotguns and rifles, led by Ras the Exhorter become Ras the Destroyer upon a great black horse. A new Ras of a haughty, vulgar dignity, dressed in the costume of an Abyssinian chieftain; a fur cap upon his head, his arm bearing a shield, a cape made of the skin of some wild animal around his shoulders. A figure more out of a dream than out of Harlem, than out of even this Harlem night, yet real, alive, alarming.
"Come away from that stupid looting," he called to a group before a store. "Come jine with us to burst in the armory and get guns and ammunition!"
And hearing his voice I opened my brief case and searched for my dark glasses, my Rineharts, drawing them out only to see the crushed lenses fall to the street. Rinehart, I thought, Rinehart! I turned. The police were back there behind me; if shooting started I'd be caught in the crossfire. I felt in my brief case, feeling papers, shattered iron, coins, my fingers closing over Tarp's leg chain, and I slipped it over my knuckles, trying to think. I closed the flap, locking it. A new mood was settling over me as they came on, a larger crowd than Ras had ever drawn. I went calmly forward, holding the heavy case but moving with a certain new sense of self, and with it a feeling almost of relief, almost of a sigh. I knew suddenly what I had to do, knew it even before it shaped itself completely in my mind.
Someone called, "Look!" and Ras bent down from the horse, saw me and flung, of all things, a spear, and I fell forward at the movement of his arm, catching myself upon my hands as a tumbler would, and heard the shock of it piercing one of the hanging dummies. I stood, my brief case coming with me.
"Betrayer!" Ras shouted.
"It's the brother," someone said. They moved up around the horse excited and not quite decided, and I faced him, knowing I was no worse than he, nor any better, and that all the months of illusion and the night of chaos required but a few simple words, a mild, even a meek, muted action to clear the air. To awaken them and me.
"I am no longer their brother," I shouted. "They want a race riot and I am against it. The more of us who are killed, the better they like —"
"Ignore his lying tongue," Ras shouted. "Hang him up to teach the black people a lesson, and theer be no more traitors. No more Uncle Toms. Hang him up theer with them blahsted dummies!"
"But anyone can see it," I shouted. "It's true, I was betrayed by those who I thought were our friends—but they counted on this man, too. They needed this destroyer to do their work. They deserted you so that in your despair you'd follow this man to your destruction. Can't you see it? They want you guilty of your own murder, your own sacrifice!"
"Grab him!" Ras shouted.
Three men stepped forward and I reached up without thinking, actually a desperate oratorical gesture of disagreement and defiance, as I shouted, "No!" But my hand struck the spear and I wrenched it free, gripping it mid-shaft, point forward. "They want this to happen," I said. "They planned it. They want the mobs to come uptown with machine guns and rifles. They want the streets to flow with blood; your blood, black blood and white blood, so that they can turn your death and sorrow and defeat into propaganda. It's simple, you've known it a long time. It goes, 'Use a nigger to catch a nigger.' Well, they used me to catch you and now they're using Ras to do away with me and to prepare your sacrifice. Don't you see it? Isn't it clear . . . ?"
"Hang the lying traitor," Ras shouted. "What are you waiting for?"
I saw a group of men start forward.
"Wait," I said. "Then kill me for myself, for my own mistake, then leave it there. Don't kill me for those who are downtown laughing at the trick they played —"
But even as I spoke I knew it was no good. I had no words and no eloquence, and when Ras thundered, "Hang him!" I stood there facing them, and it seemed unreal. I faced them knowing that the madman in a foreign costume was real and yet unreal, knowing that he wanted my life, that he held me responsible for all the nights and days and all the suffering and for all that which I was incapable of controlling, and I no hero, but short and dark with only a certain eloquence and a bottomless capacity for being a fool to mark me from the rest; saw them, recognized them at last as those whom I had failed and of whom I was now, just now, a leader, though leading them, running ahead of them, only in the stripping away of my illusionment.
I looked at Ras on his horse and at their handful of guns and recognized the absurdity of the whole night and of the simple yet confoundingly complex arrangement of hope and desire, fear and hate, that had brought me here still running, and knowing now who I was and where I was and knowing too that I had no longer to run for or from the Jacks and the Emersons and the Bledsoes and Nortons, but only from their confusion, impatience, and refusal to recognize the beautiful absurdity of their American identity and mine. I stood there, knowing that by dying, that by being hanged by Ras on this street in this destructive night I would perhaps move them one fraction of a bloody step closer to a definition of who they were and of what I was and had been. But the definition would have been too narrow; I was invisible, and hanging would not bring me to visibility, even to their eyes, since they wanted my death not for myself alone but for the chase I'd been on all my life; because of the way I'd run, been run, chased, operated, purged—although to a great extent I could have done nothing else, given their blindness (didn't they tolerate both Rinehart and Bledsoe?) and my invisibility. And that I, a little black man with an assumed name should die because a big black man in his hatred and confusion over the nature of a reality that seemed controlled solely by white men whom I knew to be as blind as he, was just too much, too outrageously absurd. And I knew that it was better to live out one's own absurdity than to die for that of others, whether for Ras's or Jack's.
So when Ras yelled, "Hang him!" I let fly the spear and it was as though for a moment I had surrendered my life and begun to live again, watching it catch him as he turned his head to shout, ripping through both cheeks, and saw the surprised pause of the crowd as Ras wrestled with the spear that locked his jaws. Some of the men raised their guns, but they were too close to shoot and I hit the first with Tarp's leg chain and the other in the middle with my brief case, then ran through a looted store, hearing the blanging of the burglar alarm as I scrambled over scattered shoes, upturned showcases, chairs—back to where I saw the moonlight through the rear door ahead. They came behind me like a draft of flames and I led them through and around to the avenue, and if they'd fired they could have had me, but it was important to them that they hang me, lynch me even, since that was the way they ran, had been taught to run. I should die by hanging alone, as though only hanging would settle things, even the score. So I ran expecting death between the shoulder blades or through the back of my head, and as I ran I was trying to get to Mary's. It was not a decision of thought but something I realized suddenly while running over puddles of milk in the black street, stopping to swing the heavy brief case and the leg chain, slipping and sliding out of their hands.
If only I could turn around and drop my arms and say, "Look, men, give me a break, we're all black folks together . . . Nobody cares." Though now I knew we cared, they at last cared enough to act—so I thought. If only I could say, "Look, they've played a trick on us, the same old trick with new variations—let's stop running and respect and love one another . . ." If only—I thought, running into another crowd now and thinking I'd gotten away, only to catch a punch on my jaw as one closed in shouting, and feeling the leg chain bounce as I caught his head and spurted forward, turning out of the avenue only to be struck by a spray of water that seemed to descend from above. It was a main that had burst, throwing a fierce curtain of spray into the night. I was going for Mary's but I was moving downtown through the dripping street rather than up, and, as I started through, a mounted policeman charged through the spray, the horse black and dripping, charging through and looming huge and unreal, neighing and clopping across the pavement upon me now as I slipped to my knees and saw the huge pulsing bulk floating down upon and over me, the sound of hooves and screams and a rush of water coming through distantly as though I sat remote in a padded room, then over, almost past, the hair of the tail a fiery lash across my eyes. I stumbled about in circles, blindly swinging the brief case, the image of a fiery comet's tail burning my smarting lids; turning and swinging blindly with brief case and leg chain and hearing the gallop begin as I floundered helplessly; and now moving straight into the full, naked force of the water, feeling its power like a blow, wet and thudding and cold, then through it and able partly to see just as another horse dashed up and through, a hunter taking a barrier, the rider slanting backward, the horse rising, then hit and swallowed by the rising spray. I stumbled down the street, the comet tail in my eyes, seeing a little better now and looking back to see the water spraying like a mad geyser in the moonlight. To Mary, I thought, to Mary.


THERE were rows of iron fences backed by low hedges before the houses and I stumbled behind them and lay panting to rest from the crushing force of the water. But hardly had I settled down, the dry, dog-day smell of the hedge in my nose, when they stopped before the house, leaning upon the fence. They were passing a bottle around and their voices sounded spent of strong emotion.
"This is some night," one of them said. "Ain't this some night?"
"It's 'bout like the rest."
"Why you say that?"
" 'Cause it's fulla fucking and fighting and drinking and lying—gimme that bottle."
"Yeah, but tonight I seen some things I never seen before."
"You think you seen something? Hell, you ought to been over on Lenox about two hours ago. You know that stud Ras the Destroyer? Well, man, he was spitting blood."
"That crazy guy?"
"Hell, yes, man, he had him a big black hoss and a fur cap and some kind of old lion skin or something over his shoulders and he was raising hell. Goddam if he wasn't a sight, riding up and down on this ole hoss, you know, one of the kind that pulls vegetable wagons, and he got him a cowboy saddle and some big spurs."
"Aw naw, man!"
"Hell, yes! Riding up and down the block yelling, 'Destroy 'em! Drive 'em out! Burn 'em out! I, Ras, commands you.' You get that, man," he said, " 'I, Ras, commands you—to destroy them to the last piece of rotten fish!' And 'bout that time some joker with a big ole Georgia voice sticks his head out the window and yells, 'Ride 'em, cowboy. Give 'em hell and bananas.' And man, that crazy sonofabitch up there on that hoss looking like death eating a sandwich, he reaches down and comes up with a forty-five and starts blazing up at that window—And man, talk about cutting out! In a second wasn't nobody left but ole Ras up there on that hoss with that lion skin stretched straight out behind him. Crazy, man. Everybody else trying to git some loot and him and his boys out for blood!"
I lay like a man rescued from drowning, listening, still not sure I was alive.
"I was over there," another voice said. "You see him when the mounted police got after his ass?"
"Hell, naw . . . Here, take a li'l taste."
"Well that's when you shoulda seen him. When he seen them cops riding up he reached back of his saddle and come up with some kind of old shield."
"A shield?"
"Hell, yes! One with a spike in the middle of it. And that ain't all; when he sees the cops he calls to one of his goddam henchmens to hand him up a spear, and a little short guy run out into the street and give him one. You know, one of the kind you see them African guys carrying in the moving pictures . . ."
"Where the hell was you, man?"
"Me? I'm over on the side where some stud done broke in a store and is selling cold beer out the window—Done gone into business, man," the voice laughed. "I was drinking me some Budweiser and digging the doings—when here comes the cops up the street, riding like cowboys, man; and when ole Ras-the-what's-his-name sees 'em he lets out a roar like a lion and rears way back and starts shooting spurs into that boss's ass fast as nickels falling in the subway at going-home time—and gaawd-dam! that's when you ought to seen him! Say, gimme a taste there, fella.
"Thanks. Here he comes bookety-bookety with that spear stuck out in front of him and that shield on his arm, charging, man. And he's yelling something in African or West Indian or something and he's got his head down low like he knew about that shit too, man; riding like Earle Sande in the fifth at Jamaica. That ole black hoss let out a whinny and got his head down—I don't know where he got that sonofabitch—but, gentlemens, I swear! When he felt that steel in his high behind he came on like Man o' War going to get his ashes hauled! Before the cops knowed what hit 'em Ras is right in the middle of 'em and one cop grabbed for that spear, and ole Ras swung 'round and bust him across the head and the cop goes down and his hoss rears up, and ole Ras tries his and tries to spear him another cop, and the other hosses is plunging around and ole Ras tries to spear him still another cop, only he's too close and the hoss is pooling and snorting and pissing and shitting, and they swings around and the cop is swinging his pistol and every time he swings ole Ras throws up his shield with one arm and chops at him with the spear with the other, and man, you could hear that gun striking that ole shield like somebody dropping tire irons out a twelve-story window. And you know what, when ole Ras saw he was too close to spear him a cop he wheeled that hoss around and rode off a bit and did him a quick round-about face and charged 'em again—out for blood, man! Only this time the cops got tired of that bullshit and one of 'em started shooting. And that was the lick! Ole Ras didn't have time to git his gun so he let fly with that spear and you could hear him grunt and say something 'bout that cop's kin-folks and then him and that hoss shot up the street leaping like Heigho, the goddam Silver!"
"Man, where'd you come from?"
"It's the truth, man, here's my right hand."
They were laughing outside the hedge and leaving and I lay in a cramp, wanting to laugh and yet knowing that Ras was not funny, or not only funny, but dangerous as well, wrong but justified, crazy and yet coldly sane . . . Why did they make it seem funny, only funny? I thought. And yet knowing that it was. It was funny and dangerous and sad. Jack had seen it, or had stumbled upon it and used it to prepare a sacrifice. And I had been used as a tool. My grandfather had been wrong about yessing them to death and destruction or else things had changed too much since his day.
There was only one way to destroy them. I got up from behind the hedge in the waning moon, wet and shaken in the hot air and started out looking for Jack, still turned around in my direction. I moved into the street, listening to the distant sounds of the riot and seeing in my mind the image of two eyes in the bottom of a shattered glass.
I kept to the darker side of streets and to the silent areas, thinking that if he wished really to hide his strategy he'd appear in the district, with a sound truck perhaps, playing the friendly adviser with Wrestrum and Tobitt beside him.
They were in civilian clothes, and I thought, Cops—until I saw the baseball bat and started to turn, hearing, "Hey, you!"
I hesitated.
"What's in that brief case?" they said, and if they'd asked me anything else I might have stood still. But at the question a wave of shame and outrage shook me and I ran, still heading for Jack. But I was in strange territory now and someone, for some reason, had removed the manhole cover and I felt myself plunge down, down; a long drop that ended upon a load of coal that sent up a cloud of dust, and I lay in the black dark upon the black coal no longer running, hiding or concerned, hearing the shifting of the coal, as from somewhere above their voices came floating down.
"You see the way he went down, zoom! I was just fixing to slug the bastard."
"You hit him?"
"I don't know."
"Say, Joe, you think the bastard's dead?"
"Maybe. He sure is in the dark though. You can't even see his eyes."
"Nigger in the coal pile, eh, Joe?"
Someone hollered down the hole, "Hey, black boy. Come on out. We want to see what's in that brief case."
"Come down and get me," I said.
"What's in that brief case?"
"You," I said, suddenly laughing. "What do you think of that?"
"Me?"
"All of you," I said.
"You're crazy," he said.
"But I still have you in this brief case!"
"What'd you steal?"
"Can't you see?" I said. "Light a match."
"What the hell's he talking about, Joe?"
"Strike a match, the boogy's nuts."
High above I saw the small flame sputter into light. They stood heads down, as in prayer, unable to see me back in the coal.
"Come on down," I said. "Hal Ha! I've had you in my brief case all the time and you didn't know me then and can't see me now."
"You sonofabitch!" one of them called, outraged. Then the match went out and I heard something fall softly upon the coal near by. They were talking above.
"You goddam black nigger sonofabitch," someone called, "see how you like this," and I heard the cover settle over the manhole with a dull clang. Fine bits of dirt showered down as they stamped upon the lid and for a moment I sent coal sliding in wild surprise, looking up, up through black space to where for a second the dim light of a match sank through a circle of holes in the steel. Then I thought, This is the way it's always been, only now I know it—and rested back, calm now, placing the brief case beneath my head. I could open it in the morning, push off the lid. Now I was tired, too tired; my mind retreating, the image of the two glass eyes running together like blobs of melting lead. Here it was as though the riot was gone and I felt the tug of sleep, seemed to move out upon black water.
It's a kind of death without hanging, I thought, a death alive. In the morning I'll remove the lid . . . Mary, I should have gone to Mary's. I would go now to Mary's in the only way that I could . . . I moved off over the black water, floating, sighing . . . sleeping invisibly.


BUT I was never to reach Mary's, and I was over-optimistic about removing the steel cap in the morning. Great invisible waves of time flowed over me, but that morning never came. There was no morning nor light of any kind to awaken me and I slept on and on until finally I was aroused by hunger. Then I was up in the dark and blundering around, feeling rough walls and the coal giving way beneath each step like treacherous sand. I tried to reach above me but found only space, unbroken and impenetrable. Then I tried to find the usual ladder that leads out of such holes, but there was none. I had to have a light, and now on hands and knees, holding tight to my brief case, I searched the coal until I found the folder of matches the men had dropped—how long ago had that been?—but there were only three and to save them I started searching for paper to make a torch, feeling about slowly over the coal pile. I needed just one piece of paper to light my way out of the hole, but there was nothing. Next I searched my pockets, finding not even a bill, or an advertising folder, or a Brotherhood leaflet. Why had I destroyed Rinehart's throwaway? Well, there was only one thing to do if I was to make a torch. I'd have to open my brief case. In it were the only papers I had.
I started with my high-school diploma, applying one precious match with a feeling of remote irony, even smiling as I saw the swift but feeble light push back the gloom. I was in a deep basement, full of shapeless objects that extended farther than I could see, and I realized that to light my way out I would have to burn every paper in the brief case. I moved slowly off, toward the darker blackness, lighting my way by these feeble torches. The next to go was Clifton's doll, but it burned so stubbornly that I reached inside the case for something else. Then by the light of the smoke-sputtering doll I opened a folded page. It was the anonymous letter, which burned so quickly that as it flamed I hurriedly unfolded another: It was that slip upon which Jack had written my Brotherhood name. I could still smell Emma's perfume even in the dampness of the cellar. And now seeing the handwriting of the two in the consuming flames I burned my hand and slipped to my knees, staring. The handwriting was the same. I knelt there, stunned, watching the flames consume them. That he, or anyone at that late date, could have named me and set me running with one and the same stroke of the pen was too much. Suddenly I began to scream, getting up in the darkness and plunging wildly about, bumping against walls, scattering coal, and in my anger extinguishing my feeble light.
But still whirling on in the blackness, knocking against the rough walls of a narrow passage, banging my head and cursing, I stumbled down and plunged against some kind of partition and sailed headlong, coughing and sneezing, into another dimensionless room, where I continued to roll about the floor in my outrage. How long this kept up, I do not know. It might have been days, weeks; I lost all sense of time. And everytime I paused to rest, the outrage revived and I went off again. Then, finally, when I could barely move, something seemed to say, "That's enough, don't kill yourself. You've run enough, you're through with them at last," and I collapsed, face forward and lay there beyond the point of exhaustion, too tired to close my eyes. It was a state neither of dreaming nor of waking, but somewhere in between, in which I was caught like Trueblood's jaybird that yellow jackets had paralyzed in every part but his eyes.


But somehow the floor had now turned to sand and the darkness to light, and I lay the prisoner of a group consisting of Jack and old Emerson and Bledsoe and Norton and Ras and the school superintendent and a number of others whom I failed to recognize, but all of whom had run me, who now pressed around me as I lay beside a river of black water, near where an armored bridge arched sharply away to where I could not see. And I was protesting their holding me and they were demanding that I return to them and were annoyed with my refusal.
"No," I said. "I'm through with all your illusions and lies, I'm through running."
"Not quite," Jack said above the others' angry demands, "but you soon will be, unless you return. Refuse and we'll free you of your illusions all right."
"No, thank you; I'll free myself," I said, struggling to rise from the cutting sand.
But now they came forward with a knife, holding me; and I felt the bright red pain and they took the two bloody blobs and cast them over the bridge, and out of my anguish I saw them curve up and catch beneath the apex of the curving arch of the bridge, to hang there, dripping down through the sunlight into the dark red water. And while the others laughed, before my pain-sharpened eyes the whole world was slowly turning red.
"Now you're free of illusions," Jack said, pointing to my seed wasting upon the air. "How does it feel to be free of one's illusions?"
And I looked up through a pain so intense now that the air seemed to roar with the clanging of metal, hearing, HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE FREE OF ILLUSION . . .
And now I answered, "Painful and empty," as I saw a glittering butterfly circle three times around my blood-red parts, up there beneath the bridge's high arch. "But look," I said pointing. And they looked and laughed, and suddenly seeing their satisfied faces and understanding, I gave a Bledsoe laugh, startling them. And Jack came forward, curious.
"Why do you laugh?" he said.
"Because at a price I now see that which I couldn't see," I said.
"What does he think he sees?" they said.
And Jack came closer, threatening, and I laughed. "I'm not afraid now," I said. "But if you'll look, you'll see . . . It's not invisible . . ."
"See what?" they said.
"That there hang not only my generations wasting upon the water —" And now the pain welled up and I could no longer see them.
"But what? Go on," they said.
"But your sun . . ."
"Yes?"
"And your moon . . ."
"He's crazy!"
"Your world . . ."
"I knew he was a mystic idealist!" Tobitt said.
"Still," I said, "there's your universe, and that drip-drop upon the water you hear is all the history you've made, all you're going to make. Now laugh, you scientists. Let's hear you laugh!"
And high above me now the bridge seemed to move off to where I could not see, striding like a robot, an iron man, whose iron legs clanged doomfully as it moved. And then I struggled up, full of sorrow and pain, shouting, "No, no, we must stop him!"


And I awoke in the blackness.
Fully awake now, I simply lay there as though paralyzed. I could think of nothing else to do. Later I would try to find my way out, but now I could only lie on the floor, reliving the dream. All their faces were so vivid that they seemed to stand before me beneath a spotlight. They were all up there somewhere, making a mess of the world. Well, let them. I was through and, in spite of the dream, I was whole.
And now I realized that I couldn't return to Mary's, or to any part of my old life. I could approach it only from the outside, and I had been as invisible to Mary as I had been to the Brotherhood. No, I couldn't return to Mary's, or to the campus, or to the Brotherhood, or home. I could only move ahead or stay here, underground. So I would stay here until I was chased out. Here, at least, I could try to think things out in peace, or, if not in peace, in quiet. I would take up residence underground. The end was in the beginning.