Flying Home and Other Stories by Ralph Ellison
Buster stumbled about, grabbing a tree for support. The doctor had said that it would make us men and Buster had said, hell, he was a man already—what he wanted was to be an Indian. We hadn’t thought about it making us scalped ones.
“You right, man,” Buster said. “Since he done scalped so much of my head away, I must be crazy as a fool. That’s why I’m in such a hurry to get down yonder with the other crazy folks. I want to be right in the middle of ’em when they really start raising hell.”
“Oh, you’ll be there, Chief Baldhead,” I said.
He looked at me blankly. “What you think ole Doc done with our scalps?”
“Made him a tripe stew, man.”
“You nuts,” Buster said. “He probably used ’em for fish bait.”
“He did, I’m going to sue him for one trillion, zillion dollars, cash,” I said.
“Maybe he gave ’em to ole Aunt Mackie, man. I bet with them she could work up some outrageous spells!”
“Man,” I said, suddenly shivering, “don’t talk about that old woman, she’s evil.”
“Hell, everybody’s so scared of her. I just wish she’d mess with me or my daddy, I’d fix her.”
I said nothing—I was afraid. For though I had seen the old woman about town all my life, she remained to me like the moon, mysterious in her very familiarity; and in the sound of her name there was terror:
Ho’ Aunt Mackie, talker-with-spirits, prophetess-of-disaster, odd-dweller-alone in a riverside shack surrounded by sunflowers, morning-glories, and strange magical weeds (Yao, as Buster, during our Indian phase, would have put it, Yao!); Old Aunt Mackie, wizen-faced walker-with-a-stick, shrill-voiced ranter in the night, round-eyed malicious one, given to dramatic trances and fiery flights of rage; Aunt Mackie, preacher of wild sermons on the busy streets of the town, hot-voiced chaser of children, snuff-dipper, visionary; wearer of greasy headrags, wrinkled gingham aprons, and old men’s shoes; Aunt Mackie, nobody’s sister but still Aunt Mackie to us all (Ho, Yao!); teller of fortunes, concocter of powerful, body-rending spells (Yah, Yao!); Aunt Mackie, the remote one though always seen about us; night-consulted adviser to farmers on crops and cattle (Yao!); herb-healer, root-doctor, and town-confounding oracle to wildcat drillers seeking oil in the earth—(Yaaaah-Ho!). It was all there in her name and before her name I shivered. Once uttered, for me the palaver was finished; I resigned it to Buster, the tough one.
Even some of the grown folks, both black and white, were afraid of Aunt Mackie, and all the kids except Buster. Buster lived on the outskirts of the town and was as unimpressed by Aunt Mackie as by the truant officer and others whom the rest of us regarded with awe. And because I was his buddy I was ashamed of my fear.
Usually I had extra courage when I was with him. Like the time two years before when we had gone into the woods with only our slingshots, a piece of fatback, and a skillet and had lived three days on the rabbits we killed and the wild berries we picked and the ears of corn we raided from farmers’ fields. We slept each rolled in his quilt, and in the night Buster had told bright stories of the world we’d find when we were grown-up and gone from hometown and family. I had no family, only Miss Janey, who took me after my mother died (I didn’t know my father), so that getting away always appealed to me, and the coming time of which Buster liked to talk loomed in the darkness around me, rich with pastel promise. And although we heard a bear go lumbering through the woods nearby and the eerie howling of a coyote in the dark, yes, and had been swept by the soft swift flight of an owl, Buster was unafraid and I had grown brave in the grace of his courage.
But to me Aunt Mackie was a threat of a different order, and I paid her the respect of fear.
“Listen to those horns,” Buster said. And now the sound came through the trees like colored marbles glinting in the summer sun.
We ran again. And now keeping pace with Buster I felt good; for I meant to be there too, at the carnival; right in the middle of all that confusion and sweating and laughing and all the strange sights to see.
“Listen to ’em, now, man,” Buster said. “Those fools is starting to shout ‘Amazing Grace’ on those horns. Let’s step on the gas!”
The scene danced below us as we ran. Suddenly there was a towering Ferris wheel revolving slowly out of the dark, its red and blue lights glowing like drops of dew dazzling a big spider web when you see it in the early morning. And we heard the beckoning blare of the band now shot through with the small, insistent, buckshot voices of the barkers.
“Listen to that trombone, man,” I said.,
“Sounds like he’s playing the dozens with the whole wide world.”
“What’s he saying, Buster?”
“He’s saying. ‘Ya’ll’s mamas don’t wear ’em. Is strictly without ’em. Don’t know nothing ’bout ’em …”
“Don’t know about what, man?”
“Draw’s, fool; he’s talking ’bout draw’s!”
“How you know, man?”
“I hear him talking, don’t I?”
“Sure, but you been scalped, remember? You crazy. How he know about those people’s mamas?” I said.
“Says he saw ’em with his great big ole eye.”
“Damn! He must be a Peeping Tom. How about those other horns?”
“Now that there tuba’s saying:
“ ‘They don’t play ’em, I know they don’t.
They don’t play ’em, I know they won’t.
They just don’t play no nasty dirty twelves …’ ”
“Man, you are a scalped-headed fool. How about that trumpet?”
“Him? That fool’s a soldier, he’s really signifying. Saying,
“ ‘So yall don’t play ’em, hey?
So ya’ll won’t play ’em, hey?
Well pat your feet and clap your hands,
’Cause I’m going to play ’em to the promised land …’
“Man, the white folks know what that fool is signifying on that horn they’d run him clear on out the world. Trumpet’s got a real nasty mouth.”
“Why you call him a soldier, man?” I said.
“ ’Cause he’s slipping ’em in the twelves and choosing ’em, all at the same time. Talking ’bout they mamas and offering to fight ’em. Now he ain’t like that ole clarinet; clarinet so sweet-talking he just eases you in the dozens.”
“Say, Buster,” I said, seriously now. “You know, we gotta stop cussing and playing the dozens if we’re going to be Boy Scouts. Those white boys don’t play that mess.”
“You doggone right they don’t,” he said, the turkey feather vibrating above his ear. “Those guys can’t take it, man. Besides, who wants to be just like them? Me, I’m gon be a scout and play the twelves too! You have to, with some of these old jokers we know. You don’t know what to say when they start teasing you, you never have no peace. You have to outtalk ’em, outrun ’em, or outfight ’em and I don’t aim to be running and fighting all the time. N’mind those white boys.”
We moved on through the growing dark. Already I could see a few stars and suddenly there was the moon. It emerged bladelike from behind a thin veil of cloud, just as I heard a new sound and looked about me with quick uneasiness. Off to our left I heard a dog, a big one. I slowed, seeing the outlines of a picket fence and the odd-shaped shadows that lurked in Aunt Mackie’s yard.
“What’s the matter, man?” Buster said.
“Listen,” I said. “That’s Aunt Mackie’s dog. Last year I was passing here and he sneaked up and bit me through the fence when I wasn’t even thinking about him …”
“Hush, man,” Buster whispered, “I hear the son-of-a-bitch back in there now. You leave him to me.”
We moved by inches now, hearing the dog barking in the dark. Then we were going past and he was throwing his heavy body against the fence, straining at his chain. We hesitated, Buster’s hand on my arm. I undid my heavy canteen belt and held it, suddenly light in my fingers. In my right I gripped the hatchet which I’d brought along.
“We’d better go back and take the other path,” I whispered.
“Just stand still, man,” Buster said.
The dog hit the fence again, barking hoarsely; and in the interval following the echoing crash I could hear the distant music of the band.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go round.”
“Hell, no! We’re going straight! I ain’t letting no damn dog scare me, Aunt Mackie or no Aunt Mackie. Come on!”
Trembling, I moved with him toward the roaring dog, then felt him stop again, and I could hear him removing his pack and taking out something wrapped in paper.
“Here,” he said. “You take my stuff and come on.”
I took his gear and went behind him, hearing his voice suddenly hot with fear and anger saying, “Here, you ’gatormouthed egg-sucker, see how you like this sage hen,” just as I tripped over the straps of his pack and went down. Then I was crawling frantically, trying to untangle myself and hearing the dog growling as he crunched something in his jaws. “Eat it, you buzzard,” Buster was saying, “see if you tough as he is,” as I tried to stand, stumbling and sending an old cooking range crashing in the dark. Part of the fence was gone and in my panic I had crawled into the yard. Now I could hear the dog bark threateningly and leap the length of his chain toward me, then back to the sage hen; toward me, a swift leaping form snatched backward by the heavy chain, turning to mouth savagely on the mangled bird. Moving away, I floundered over the stove and pieces of crating, against giant sunflower stalks, trying to get back to Buster, when I saw the lighted window and realized that I had crawled to the very shack itself. That’s when I pressed against the weathered-satin side of the shack and came erect. And there, framed by the window in the lamp-lit room, I saw the woman.
A brown naked woman, whose black hair hung beneath her shoulders. I could see the long graceful curve of her back as she moved in some sort of slow dance, bending forward and back, her arms and body moving as though gathering in something which I couldn’t see but which she drew to her with pleasure; a young, girlish body with slender, well-rounded hips. But who? flashed through my mind as I heard Buster’s Hey, man; where’d you go? You done run out on me? from back in the dark. And I willed to move, to hurry away—but in that instant she chose to pick up a glass from a wobbly old round white table and to drink, turning slowly as she stood with backward-tilted head, slowly turning in the lamplight and drinking slowly as she turned, slowly; until I could see the full-faced glowing of her feminine form.
And I was frozen there, watching the uneven movement of her breasts beneath the glistening course of the liquid, spilling down her body in twin streams drawn by the easy tiding of her breathing. Then the glass came down and my knees flowed beneath me like water. The air seemed to explode soundlessly. I shook my head but she, the image, would not go away and I wanted suddenly to laugh wildly and to scream. For above the smooth shoulders of the girlish form I saw the wrinkled face of old Aunt Mackie.
Now, I had never seen a naked woman before, only very little girls or once or twice a skinny one my own age, who looked like a boy with the boy part missing. And even though I’d seen a few calendar drawings they were not alive like this, nor images of someone you’d thought familiar through having seen them passing through the streets of the town; nor like this inconsistent, with wrinkled face mismatched with glowing form. So that mixed with my fear of punishment for peeping there was added the terror of her mystery. And yet I could not move away. I was fascinated, hearing the growling dog and feeling a warm pain grow beneath my bandage—along with the newly risen terror that this deceptive old woman could cause me to feel this way, that she could be so young beneath her old baggy clothes.
She was dancing again now, still unaware of my eyes, the lamplight playing on her body as she swayed and enfolded the air or invisible ghosts or whatever it was within her arms. Each time she moved, her hair, which was black as night now that it was no longer hidden beneath a greasy headrag, swung heavily about her shoulders. And as she moved to the side I could see the gentle tossing of her breasts beneath her upraised arms. It just can’t be, I thought, it just can’t, and moved closer, determined to see and to know. But I had forgotten the hatchet in my hand until it struck the side of the house and I saw her turn quickly toward the window, her face evil as she swayed. I was rigid as stone, hearing the growling dog mangling the bird and knowing that I should run even as she moved toward the window, her shadow flying before her, her hair now wild as snakes writhing on a dead tree during a springtime flood. Then I could hear Buster’s hoarse-voiced Hey, man! Where in hell are you? even as she pointed at me and screamed, sending me moving backward, and I was aware of the sickle-shaped moon flying like a lightning flash as I fell, still gripping my hatchet, and struck my head in the dark.
When I started out of it someone was holding me and I lay in light and looked up to see her face above me. Then it all flooded swiftly back and I was aware again of the contrast between smooth body and wrinkled face and experienced a sudden warm yet painful thrill. She held me close. Her breath came to me, sweetly alcoholic as she mumbled something about “Little devil, lips that touch wine shall never touch mine! That’s what I told him, understand me? Never,” she said loudly. “You understand?”
“Yes, ma’m …”
“Never, never, NEVER!”
“No, ma’m,” I said, seeing her study me with narrowed eyes.
“You young but you young’uns understand, devilish as you is. What you doing messing round in my yard?”
“I got lost,” I said. “I was coming from taking some Boy Scout tests and I was trying to get by your dog.”
“So that’s what I heard,” she said. “He bite you?”
“No, ma’m.”
“Corse not, he don’t bite on the new moon. No, I think you come in my yard to spy on me.”
“No, ma’m, I didn’t,” I said. “I just happened to see the light when I was stumbling around trying to find my way.”
“You got a pretty big hatchet there,” she said, looking down at my hand. “What you plan to do with it?”
“It’s a kind of Boy Scout ax,” I said. “I used it to come through the woods …”
She looked at me dubiously. “So,” she said, “you’re a heavy hatchet man and you stopped to peep. Well, what I want to know is, is you a drinking man? Have your lips ever touched wine?”
“Wine? No, ma’m.”
“So you ain’t a drinking man, but do you belong to church?”
“Yes, ma’m.”
“And have you been saved and ain’t no backslider?”
“Yessum.”
“Well,” she said, pursing her lips, “I guess you can kiss me.”
“MA’M?”
“That’s what I said. You passed all the tests and you was peeping in my window …”
She was holding me there on a cot, her arms around me as though I were a three-year-old, smiling like a girl. I could see her fine white teeth and the long hairs on her chin and it was like a bad dream. “You peeped,” she said, “now you got to do the rest. I said kiss me, or I’ll fix you …”
I saw her face come close and felt her warm breath and closed my eyes, trying to force myself. It’s just like kissing some sweaty woman at church, I told myself, some friend of Miss Janey’s. But it didn’t help and I could feel her drawing me and I found her lips with mine. It was dry and firm and winey and I could hear her sigh. “Again,” she said, and once more my lips found hers. And suddenly she drew me to her and I could feel her breasts soft against me as once more she sighed.
“That was a nice boy,” she said, her voice kind, and I opened my eyes. “That’s enough now, you’re both too young and too old, but you’re brave. A regular li’l chocolate hero.”
And now she moved and I realized for the first time that my hand had found its way to her breast. I moved it guiltily, my face flaming as she stood.
“You’re a good brave boy,” she said, looking at me from deep in
I sat up as she stood looking down upon me with a mysterious smile. And I could see her body up close now, in the dim yellow light; see the surprising silkiness of black hair mixed here and there with gray, and suddenly I was crying and hating myself for the compelling need. I looked at my hatchet lying on the floor now and wondered how she’d gotten me into the shack as the tears blurred my eyes.
“What’s the matter, boy?” she said. And I had no words to answer.
“What’s the matter, I say!”
“I’m hurting in my operation,” I said desperately, knowing that my tears were too complicated to put into any words I knew.
“Operation? Where?”
I looked away.
“Where you hurting, boy?” she demanded.
I looked into her eyes and they seemed to flood through me, until reluctantly I pointed toward my pain.
“Open it, so’s I can see,” she said. “You know I’m a healer, don’t you?”
I bowed my head, still hesitating.
“Well open it then. How’m I going to see with all those clothes on you?”
My face burned like fire now and the pain seemed to ease as a dampness grew beneath the bandage. But she would not be denied and I undid myself and saw a red stain on the gauze. I lay there ashamed to raise my eyes.
“Hmmmmmmm,” she said. “A fishing worm with a headache!” And I couldn’t believe my ears. Then she was looking into my eyes and grinning.
“Pruned,” she cackled in her high, old woman’s voice, “pruned. Boy, you have been pruned. I’m a doctor but no tree surgeon—no, lay still a second.”
She paused and I saw her hand come forward, three clawlike fingers taking me gently as she examined the bandage.
And I was both ashamed and angry and now I stared at her out of a quick resentment and a defiant pride. I’m a man, I said within myself. Just the same I am a man! But I could only stare at her face briefly as she looked at me with a gleam in her eyes. Then my eyes fell and I forced myself to look boldly at her now, very brown in the lamplight, with all the complicated apparatus within the globular curvatures of flesh and vessel exposed to my eyes. I was filled then with a deeper sense of the mystery of it too, for now it was as though the nakedness was nothing more than another veil; much like the old baggy dresses she always wore. Then across the curvature of her stomach I saw a long, puckered crescent-shaped scar.