Dressed in a chef’s cap, apron, and huge asbestos gloves, he was armed with a long-tined fork which he flourished broadly as he entertained the notables for whom he was preparing a barbecue. These gentlemen and ladies were lounging in their chairs or standing about in groups sipping the tall iced drinks which two white-jacketed Filipino boys were serving. The Senator was dividing his attention between the spareribs, cooking in a large chrome grill cart, and displaying his great talent for mimicking his colleagues with such huge success that the party was totally unaware of what was swiftly approaching. Nor, in fact, was I.
I was about to pass on when a gleaming white Cadillac convertible, which had been moving slowly in the heavy traffic from the east, rolled abreast of me and suddenly blocked the path by climbing the curb, then rolling across the walk and onto the Senator’s lawn. The top was back and the driver, smiling as though in a parade, was a well-dressed Negro man of about thirty-five, who sported the gleaming hair affected by their jazz musicians and prizefighters, and who sat behind the wheel with that engrossed yet relaxed, almost ceremonial attention to form that was once to be observed only among the finest horsemen. So closely did the car brush past that I could have reached out with no effort and touched the rich leather upholstery. A bull fiddle rested in the back and I watched the man drive smoothly up the lawn until he was some seventy-five yards below the mansion, where he braked the machine and stepped out to stand waving toward the terrace, a gallant salutation grandly given.
At first, in my innocence, I placed the man as a musician, for there was, after all, the bull fiddle; then in swift succession I thought him a chauffeur for one of the guests, a driver for a news or fashion magazine or an advertising agency or television network. For I quickly realized that a musician wouldn’t have been asked to perform at the spot where the car was stopped, and that since he was alone, it was unlikely that anyone, not even the Senator, would have hired a musician to play serenades on a bull fiddle. So next I decided that the man had either been sent with equipment to be used in covering the festivities taking place on the terrace, or that he had driven the car over to be photographed against the luxurious background. The waving I interpreted as the expression of simpleminded high spirits aroused by the driver’s pleasure in piloting such a luxurious automobile, the simple exuberance of a Negro allowed a role in what he considered an important public spectacle. A small crowd had gathered, which watched bemusedly.
Since it was widely known that the Senator is a master of the new political technology, who ignores no medium and wastes no opportunity for keeping his image ever in the public’s eye, I wasn’t disturbed when I saw the driver walk to the trunk and begin to remove several red objects and place them on the grass. I wasn’t using my binoculars now, and thought these were small equipment cases. Unfortunately, I was mistaken.
For now, having finished unpacking, the driver stepped back behind the wheel and suddenly I could see the top rising from its place of concealment to soar into place like the wing of some great, slow, graceful bird. Stepping out again, he picked up one of the cases—now suddenly transformed into the type of can which during the war was something used to transport high-octane gasoline in Liberty ships (a highly dangerous cargo for those round bottoms and the men who sailed them) and, leaning carefully forward, began emptying its contents upon the shining chariot.
And thus, I thought, is gilded an eight-valved, three-hundred-and-fifty-horse-powered lily!
For so accustomed have we Americans become to the tricks, the shenanigans and frauds of advertising, so adjusted to the contrived fantasies of commerce—indeed, to pseudo-events of all kinds—that I thought that the car was being drenched with a special liquid which would make it more alluring for a series of commercial photographs.
Indeed, I looked up the crowded boulevard behind me, listening for the horn of a second car or station wagon which would bring the familiar load of pretty models, harassed editors, nervous wardrobe mistresses, and elegant fashion photographers who would convert the car, the clothes, and the Senator’s elegant home into a photographic rite of spring.
And with the driver there to remind me, I even expected a few ragged colored street urchins to be brought along to form a poignant but realistic contrast to the luxurious costumes and high-fashion surroundings: an echo of the somber iconography in which the crucified Christ is flanked by a repentant and an unrepentant thief, or the three Wise Eastern Kings bearing their rich gifts before the humble stable of Bethlehem.
But now reality was moving too fast for the completion of this fantasy. Using my binoculars for a closer view, I could see the driver take a small spherical object from the trunk of the car, and a fuzzy tennis ball popped into focus against the dark smoothness of his fingers. This was joined by a long wooden object which he held like a conductor’s baton and began forcing against the ball until it was pierced. This gave the ball a slender handle which he tested delicately for balance, drenched with liquid, and placed carefully behind the left fin of the car.
Reaching into the backseat now, he came up with a bass-fiddle bow upon which he accidentally spilled the liquid, and I could see drops of fluid roping from the horsehairs and falling with an iridescent spray into the sunlight. Facing us now, he proceeded to tighten the horsehairs, working methodically, very slowly, with his head gleaming in the sunlight and beads of sweat standing over his brow.
As I watched, I became aware of the swift gathering of a crowd around me, people asking puzzled questions, and a certain tension, as during the start of a concert, was building. And I had just thought, And now he’ll bring out the fiddle, when he opened the door and hauled it out, carrying it, with the dripping bow swinging from his right hand, up the hill some thirty feet above the car, and placed it lovingly on the grass. A gentle wind started to blow now, and I swept my glasses past his gleaming head to the mansion, and as I screwed the focus to infinity, I could see several figures spring suddenly from the shadows on the shaded and shrub-lined terrace of the mansion’s far wing. They were looking on like the spectators of a minor disturbance at a dull baseball game, then a large woman grasped that something was out of order and I could see her mouth come open and her eyes blaze as she called out soundlessly, “Hey, you down there!” Then the driver’s head cut into the field of vision and I took down the glasses and watched him moving, broad-shouldered and jaunty, up the hill to where he’d left the fiddle. For a moment he stood with his head back, his white jacket taut across his shoulders, looking toward the terrace. He waved then, and shouted something which escaped me, then, facing the machine, he took something from his pocket, and I saw him touch the flame of a cigarette lighter to the tennis ball and begin blowing gently upon it, then, waving it about like a child twirling a Fourth of July sparkler, he watched it sputter into a blue ball of flame.
I tried to anticipate what was coming next but simply 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. People were 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 ga
soline, 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 like the chief celebrant of an outlandish rite, he had held firmly to his middle ground; too dangerously near the flaming convertible for anyone not protected by asbestos suiting to risk laying hands upon him, yet far enough away to highlight his human vulnerability to fire. But now as I watched him move to the left of the flames to a point allowing him an uncluttered view of the crowd, his white suit reflecting the flames, he was briefly obscured by a sudden swirl of smoke, and it was during this brief interval that I heard the voice.
Strong and hoarse and typically Negro in quality, it seemed to issue with eerie clarity from the fire itself. Then I was struggling within myself for the reporter’s dedicated objectivity and holding my microphone forward as he raised both arms above his head, his long, limber fingers widespread as he waved toward us.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “please don’t be disturbed! I don’t mean you any harm, and if you’ll just stay quiet a minute I’ll tell you what this is all about ….”
He paused and the Senator’s voice could be heard angrily in the background.
“Never mind him up there on top of the hill,” the driver said. “You can listen to him when I get through. He’s had too much free speech anyway. Now it’s my turn.”
And at this a man at the other end of the crowd shouted angrily and tried to break up the hill. He was grabbed by two men, and a hysterical, dark-haired woman wearing a well-filled chemise-style dress slipped to the ground holding a leg, shouting, “No, Fleetwood, no! That crazy nigger will kill you!”
The arsonist watched with blank-faced calm as the man was dragged protesting back into the crowd. Then a shift in the breeze whipped smoke down upon us and gave rise to a flurry of coughing.
“Now believe me,” the arsonist continued, “I know that it’s very, very hard for you folks to look at what I’m doing and not be disturbed, because for you it’s a crime and a sin.”
He laughed, swinging his fiddle bow in a shining arch as the crowd watched him fixedly.
“That’s because you know that most folks can’t afford to own one of these Caddies. Not even good, hardworking folks, no matter what the pictures in the papers say. So deep down it makes you feel some larceny. You feel that it’s unfair that everybody who’s willing to work hard can’t have one for himself. That’s right! And you feel that in order to get one it’s okay for a man to lie and cheat and steal—yeah, even swindle his own mother if she’s got the cash. That’s the difference between what you say you believe and the way you act if you get the chance. Oh, yes, because words is words, but life is hard and earnest, and these here Caddies is way, way out of this world!”
Pausing, he loosened the knot in his blue-and-white tie so that it hung down the front of his jacket in a large loop, then wiped his brow with a blue silk handkerchief.
“I don’t mean to insult you,” he said, bending toward us now, the fiddle bow resting across his knee, “I’m just reminding you of the facts. Because I can see in your eyes that it’s going to cost me more to get rid of this Caddie the way I have to do it than it cost me to get it. I don’t rightly know what the price will be, but I know that when you people get scaird and shook up, you get violent. —No, wait a minute.” He shook his head. “That’s not how I meant to say it. I’m sorry. I apologize.
“Listen, here it is: This morning,” he shouted now, stabbing his bow toward the mansion with angry emphasis. “This morning that fellow Senator Sun-raider up there started it when he shot off his mouth over the radio. That’s what this is all about! I realized that things had gotten out of control. I realized all of a sudden that the man was messing … with … my Cadillac, and that’s serious as all hell….
“Listen to me, y’all: A little while ago I was romping past Richmond, feeling fine. I had played myself three hundred and seventy-five dollars and thirty-three cents’ worth of gigs down in Chattanooga, and I was headed home to Harlem as straight as I could go. I wasn’t bothering anybody. I didn’t even mean to stop by here, because this town has a way of making a man feel like he’s living in a fool’s paradise. When I’m here, I never stop thinking about the difference between what it is and what it’s supposed to be. In fact, I have the feeling that somebody put the Indian sign on this town a long, long time ago, and I don’t want to be around when it takes effect. So, like I say, I wasn’t even thinking about this town. I was rolling past Richmond and those white-walls were slapping those concrete slabs and I was rolling and the wind was feeling fine on my face—and that’s when I made my sad mistake. Ladies and gentlemen, I turned on the radio. I had nothing against anybody. I was just hoping to hear some Dinah, or Duke, or Hawk so that I could study their phrasing and improve my style and enjoy myself. —But what do I get? I’ll tell you what I got—”
He dropped his shoulders with a sudden violent twist, and his index finger jabbed toward the terrace behind him, bellowing, “I GOT THAT NO GOOD, NOWHERE SENATOR SUNRAIDER! THAT’S WHAT I GOT! AND WHAT WAS HE DOING? HE WAS TRYING TO GET THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO MESS WITH MY CADILLAC! AND WHAT’S MORE, HE WAS CALLING MY CADDY A ‘COON CAGE’!
“Ladies and gentlemen, I couldn’t believe my ears. I don’t know that Senator, and I know he doesn’t know me from old Bodiddily. But just the same, there he is, talking straight to me, and there was no use of my trying to dodge. Because I do live in Harlem and I lo-mo-sho drive a Cadillac. So I had to sit there and take it like a little man. There he was, a United States SENATOR, coming through my own radio telling me what I ought to be driving, and
recommending to the United States Senate and the whole country that the name of my car be changed simply because I, me, LeeWillie Minifees, was driving it!
“It made me feel faint. It upset my mind like a midnight telegram!
“I said to myself, ‘LeeWillie, what on earth is this man talking about? Here you been thinking you had it made. You been thinking you were as free as a bird—even though a black bird. That good-rolling Jersey Turnpike is up ahead to get you home. —And now here comes this Senator putting you in a cage! What in the world is going on?
“I got so nervous that all at once my foot weighed ninety-nine pounds, and before I knew it I was doing seventy-five. I was breaking the law! I guess I was really trying to get away from that voice and what the man had said. But I was rolling and I was listening. I couldn’t help myself. What I was hearing was going against my whole heart and soul, but I was listening anyway. And what I heard was beginning to make me see things in a new light. Yes, and that new light was making my eyeballs ache. And all the time Senator Sun-raider up in the Senate was calling my car a ‘coon cage.’