Juneteenth (37 page)

“Reverend Bliss,” Hickman was saying, “in the dark of night, alone in the desert of my own loneliness I have thought long upon this. I have thought upon you and me and all the old scriptural stories of Isaac and Joseph and upon our slave forefathers who killed their babes rather than have them lost in bondage, and upon my life here
and the trials and tribulations and the jokes and laughter and all the endless turns-about that mark man’s life in this world—and each time I return, each time my mind returns and makes its painful way back to the mystery of you and the mystery of birth and resurrection and hope which now seems endless in its complication. Yes, and I think upon the mystery of my involvement in it—me, a black preacher’s willful son, a gambler-musician who rejoiced in the sounds of our little hidden triumph in this world of deceitful triumphs. Me, given you and your gifts, your possibilities in this whirlwind of circumstance. How and why did it happen? Why was I, the weakest of vessels, chosen to give so much and to have to try to understand so much which hardly seems understandable? Why did He give me this mysterious burden and then seem to mock me and challenge me and let men revile and despise me and wipe my heart upon the floor of this world after I had suffered and offered it up in sacrifice because in the coming together of hate and love and life and death that marked the beginning, I looked upon those I love and upon them who caused their death and was unable to accept it except as I’d already accepted the blues, the clap, the loss of love, the fate of man.… I bared my breast, I lowered my head into the ashes where they had burned my own, my loved ones, and accepted Thy will. Why didst Thou choose me, single me out for further humiliation who had been designated for humiliation by men unworthy, by men most unworthy, Lord? Why? Why me? Me who had accepted my blackness as my fate, in the dark and shadowy complication of Thy will? And yet, down there in the craziness of the Southland, in the madhouse of down home, the old motherland where I in all my ignorance and desperation was taught to deal with the complications of Thy plan, yes, and at a time when I was learning to live and to glean some sense of how Thy voice could sing through the blues and even speak through the dirty dozens if only
the players were rich-spirited and resourceful enough, comical enough, vital enough and enough aware of the disciplines of life. In the zest and richness Thou were there, yes! But still, still, still, my question Lord! Though I say, quiet, quiet, my tongue. So teach me, Lord, to move on and yet be still; to question and not cry out, Lord, Lord, WHY?… Why?”

And Hickman slept.

CHAPTER 14

So now I suppose that the medicine is taking him over again
, Hickman thought.
The needle has reached through his flesh into his mind. Those hypos into the vein then … The way he looks at me, still wanting to talk and his eyes dulling. But the hopeful thing is that he’s fighting to live, to stay alive. Regardless of what it will all have to mean if he does, he still wants to live. So my task is simply to help him to keep on fighting, to keep on wanting to live. What else is there, other than what a minister always tries to do to help? Comfort and consolation—no, not just that, because there’s still the mystery to be understood. Reverse the time. Lord, but I’m tired … cramped in muscle and confused in mind.… Maybe I ought to go out and stretch my legs, get a little fresh air in my lungs. No, you can’t risk it because it would be just like him to come to while I’m out and if he did, what would be the next move? Forget it; you’ve waited all this long time so you can afford to sit still and wait awhile longer—tired or no tired.… Those hypos … He’s sleeping hard, quiet in his body if not in his mind. Hypos. I sure hope so, because the time has come when everything has to be understood and I mean to be here to try.…

Just look at him, Hickman, there he is: Bliss at last. Out of all the time and racked and tiered-up circumstance, out of all the pomp and power-seeking—there’s ole Bliss. It makes you wonder all over again just what kind of being man really is; makes you puzzle over the difference between who he is and what he does. But how do you separate it? Body and soul are all mixed together and yet are something different just the same. One grows in the way it’s destined to grow, flesh and bone, blood and nerves, skin and hair, from the beginning; while the other twists and turns and hides and seeks and makes up itself as it grows and moves along. So there he is and for whatever the world knows him to be, somehow he’s still Bliss.… It’s like hearing a firecracker go off at a parade and you look up and see the great and bejeweled king of the Mardi Gras, sitting high on his throne in all his shiny majesty, and he starts to shake and cough and there, before your eyes, a little ole boy looks out from behind his mask. Well, the child is father and somewhere back there in the past, back behind little Bliss’s face, this twitching, wounded man was waiting. No point of dreaming about it either. I was in the picture and a lot of other folks too, and we made a plan, or at least we dreamed a dream and worked for it but the world was simply too big for us and the dream got out of hand. So we held on to what we saw, us old ones, and finally it brought us here
.

But just look at him—who would have thought that it would come to this, that our little Bliss would come to this? But why, Master? Why did this have to be? Back there in our foolish way we took him as our young hope, as our living guarantee that in our dismal night You still spoke to us and stood behind Your promise, even when things were most hopeless. Now look at him, all ravaged by his denials, sapped by his running, drained and twitching like a coke-fiend from all the twistings and turnings that brought him here. All damaged in his substance by trying to make everything appear to be the truth and nothing really truthful, playing all the old lying, obscene games of denial and rejection of the poor and beaten down. And even at the very last moment, refusing to recognize us, refusing to even see us who could never
forget the promise and who for years haven’t asked anything except that he remember and honor the days of his youth—or at least his baby days. Honor, oh yes; honor. But not to us but honor unto Thy dying lamb. We asked nothing for ourselves, only that he remember those days and what he had been at that time. Remember the promising babe that he was and the hope we placed in him and his obligation to the babes who come after. Maybe that was our mistake, we just couldn’t surrender everything, we just couldn’t manage to burn out the memory and cauterize the wound and deny that it had ever happened … that he had ever existed. Couldn’t treat all of that like a hobo walking along the tracks back of town who passes and looks up and sees your face and spits on the cinders and crunches on. Gone without a word … After having been born so close to the time of whips and cold iron shackles we could fly up here in an airplane—which is like the promise of a miracle fulfilled … which is no longer miraculous—but still there on the bed lies the old abiding mystery in its latest form and still mysterious. Why’m I here, Master? Why? And how is it that a man like him, who has learned so much and gone so far, never learned the simple fact that it takes two to make a bargain or to bury a hatchet, or even to forget words uttered in dedication and taken deep into the heart and made sanctified by suffering? Blood spilled in violence doesn’t just dry and drift away in the wind, no! It cries out for restitution, redemption; and we
(
or at least I—because it was only me in the beginning
)
, but we took the child and tried to seek the end of the old brutal dispensation in the hope that a little gifted child would speak for our condition from inside the only acceptable mask. That he would embody our spirit in the councils of our enemies—but, oh, what a foolish miscalculation! Way back there … I’m no wise man now, but then, Lord, how mixed-up and naive I was! There I was, riffing on Thy Word and not even sure whether I was conducting a con game or simply taking part and leading in a mysterious prayer—Forgive me my ignorance.… Yesterday after the shooting started.… Was it yesterday? It was, wasn’t it, Hickman? How long? Have you been sitting here all that time? How many hours in this hospital
waiting and talking and talking and remembering and revealing and talking and not revealing? And all because I slipped up and was sitting there in that gallery looking on like a man watching a scene unfolding in a dream instead of acting on the facts already exploding in my face. I could have stepped in front of that boy—or at least have picked him out of the crowd and stopped and tried to talk some sense into his head. But my eyes, my old eyes failed me. So now this sitting and waiting. It was awful! Truly awful! But what’s a man to do, Hickman? So you try, you do your best as you see your best. Yes, but you realize that there’s no guarantee that it’s going to work. The best intentions have cracks in them, man, and that’ll never change
.

Not until somebody puts the Lord’s sun into a bushel basket—ho now! So here we come all this way and after all these years and there was no stopping even a fraction of it. Talking about sending a boy to do a man’s work, this coiled spring has been stretched out so far that when it started to snap back I’d almost reached my second childhood. Talking to myself and belching in crowds and in the deep of night dreaming kindly of my wicked days and all against my duties and my soul’s need. Lucky my bladder’s still what it was years ago and I still have good breath control because my strong old slave-borne body has held up pretty well as bodies go.… Still, you failed. You were in the right place but not enough in it. You saw what was coming because Janey had warned you. You knew something was going to happen but not its shape or its outrageous face. So I simply couldn’t stop it. Sometimes everything mocks a man—even his own tongue, his eyes and hands. Then babes judge him and fools ignorant of his strengths leap on his weaknesses like a mosquito finding the one tender spot at the back of his knee where it knows it can draw his blood
.

Like that reporter asking me how come I was crying over a man who hates my people so. First place, I didn’t realize that I
was
crying. At a time like that was I supposed to be thinking of how I looked? Did those senators think about how they looked when they were breaking for those doors like a crowd of crapshooters when a raid is on? Sure, I must have looked pretty foolish crying
in a place like that, but tell me, who can simply look at his own reflection at such a time? I guess that reporter, that McIntyre, was looking at himself looking at me while all I could see was a great part of my life blowing up to a snick-snick-snick of bullets. Was I supposed to observe some kind of etiquette that has nothing to do with how I feel about things? And surely he didn’t understand my saying that I was crying because I didn’t know what else to do—me, a man of prayer. But hadn’t I been praying for Bliss all these long years? One thing is sure, I couldn’t bat those bullets down in midair. Oh no, too much was riding with those bullets, and when I missed that boy I missed my chance to stop the outrage. Yes, and maybe we lost all those hard, hopeful years.… “Rejoice when your enemy is struck down, why aren’t you rejoicing?” That’s what that reporter was saying; but what if it’s too mixed up for that? What if there’s more than appears on the surface? You live inside it for years, moving with it and feeling it grow and change and getting more complicated and making you grow more confused and complicated—except that you keep the faith; while folks outside think it’s simply just a matter of “a” or “b,” or else they think that it disappeared and no longer matters; while all the time it has been growing and sending out its roots until it touches everything in sight and all the streets you walk and all the deep actions of a man’s mind and heart—yes. So I was deep upset, that’s all. I lost control. I admit it and no apologies. Because when something hits you where you live you have
got
to go. Dignity, I guess that’s what that white boy was talking about. I suppose to his mind I should have been worrying about those senators who have never thought a single thing about my dignity except maybe as a joke. Dred Scott’s cross is mine—Anyway, I’ve known crowds that had sharper teeth and more searching and penetrating eyes just because they were my own and so knew something about what it really costs to keep your dignity under pressure. In the old days I kept playing even when the bullets got to flying. We all did. I shouldn’t have paid that reporter any attention because when I reacted I almost let him provoke me into telling him something, which would have been a mistake arising out of pride. I almost let him know
that there was a secret to be revealed. Asking me why I was crying—well, if we can’t cry for Bliss, then who? If
we
can’t cry for the Nation, then who? Because who else draws their grief and consternation from a longer knowledge or from a deeper and more desperate hope? And who’ve paid more in trying to achieve their better promise?

But, Hickman, you almost gave the thing away!