Three Days Before the Shooting ... by Ralph Ellison Page A

couldn’t accept it. The Negro was twirling the ball on that long, black-tipped wooden needle—the kind used to knit heavy sweaters—holding it between his thumb and fingers in the manner of a fire-eater at a circus, and I couldn’t have been more surprised if he had thrown back his head and plunged the flame down his throat than by what came next. Through the glasses now I could see sweat beading out beneath his scalp line and on the flesh above the stiff hairs of his moustache as he grinned broadly and took up the fiddle bow, and before I could move he had shot his improvised, flame-tipped arrow into the cloth top of the convertible.
    “That black son of the devil!” someone shouted, and I had the impression of a wall of heat springing up from the grass before me. Then the flames erupted with a stunning blue roar that sent the spectators scattering. Peoplewere shouting now, and through the blue flames before me I could see the Senator and his guests running from the terrace to halt at the top of the lawn, looking down, while behind me there were screams, the grinding of brakes, the thunder of footfalls as the promenaders broke in a great spontaneous wave up the grassy slope, then, sensing the danger of exploding gasoline, receding hurriedly to a safer distance below, their screams and curses ringing above the roar of the flames.
    How, oh, how I wished for a cinema camera to synchronize with my recorder!—which I brought automatically into play as heavy fumes of alcohol and gasoline, those defining spirits of our age, filled the air. There before me unfolding in tableau vivant was surely the most unexpected picture of the year: in the foreground at the bottom of the slope, a rough semicircle of outraged faces; in the midforeground, up the gentle rise of the lawn, the white convertible shooting into the springtime air a radiance of intense blue flame, like that of a welder’s torch or a huge fowl being flambéed in choice cognac; then on the rise above, distorted by heat and flame, the dark-skinned, white-suited driver: standing with his gleaming face expressive of high excitement as he watched the effect of his deed. Then, rising high in the background atop the grassy hill, the white-capped Senator surrounded by his notable guests—all caught in postures eloquent of surprise, shock, and indignation.
    The air was filled with an overpowering smell of wood alcohol, which, as the leaping red and blue flames took firm hold, mingled with the odor of burning paint, and leather. I became aware of the fact that the screaming had suddenly faded now, and I could hear the swoosh-pop-crackle and hiss of the fire. And with the gaily dressed crowd having become silent, it was as though I were alone, isolated, observing a conflagration produced by a stroke of lightning flashed out of a clear springtime sky. We watched with that sense of awe similar to that which medieval crowds must have observed during the burning of a great cathedral. We were stunned by the sacrificial act, and indeed, it was as though we had become the unwilling participants in a primitive ceremony requiring the sacrifice of a beautiful object in appeasement of some terrifying and long-dormant spirit, which the black man in the white suit was summoning from a long, black sleep. And as we watched, our faces strained as though in anticipation of the spirit’s materialization from the fiery metamorphosis of the white machine, a spirit which I was afraid, whatever the form in which it appeared, would be powerfully good or powerfully evil and absolutely out of place here and now in Washington; it was uncanny. The whole afternoon seemed to float, and when I looked again to the top of the hill the people there appeared to move in slow motion through watery waves of heat. Then I saw the Senator, with chef cap awry, raising his asbestos gloves above his head and beginning to shout. And it was then that the driver, the firebrand, went into action.
    ‘Til now, looking