Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [211]
"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.