Ralph Ellison - Invisible man

There were many of the regular customers draped around the bar. The room was crowded and Barrelhouse was on duty. I could feel the frame of the glasses cutting into the ridge of my nose as I tilted my hat and squeezed up to the bar. Barrelhouse looked at me roughly, his lips pushed out.

"What brand you drinking tonight, Poppa-stopper?" he said.

"Make it Ballantine's," I said in my natural voice.

I watched his eyes as he set the beer before me and slapped the bar with his enormous hand for his money. Then, my heart beating faster, I made my old gesture of payment, spinning the coin upon the bar and waited. The coin disappeared into his fist.

"Thanks, pops," he said, moving on and leaving me puzzled. For there had been recognition of a kind in his voice but not for me. He never called me "pops" or "poppa-stopper." It's working, I thought, perhaps it's working very well.

Certainly something was working on me, and profoundly. Still I was relieved. It was hot. Perhaps that was it. I drank the cold beer, looking back to the rear of the room to the booths. A crowd of men and women moiled like nightmare figures in the smoke-green haze. The juke box was dinning and it was like looking into the depths of a murky cave. And now someone moved aside and looking down along the curve of the bar past the bobbing heads and shoulders I saw the juke box, lit up like a bad dream of the Fiery Furnace, shouting:

And yet, I thought, watching a numbers runner paying off a bet, this is one place that the Brotherhood definitely penetrated. Let Hambro explain that, too, along with all the rest he'd have to explain.

I drained the glass and turned to leave, when there across at the lunch counter I saw Brother Maceo. I moved impulsively, forgetting my disguise until almost upon him, then checked myself and put my disguise once more to a test. Reaching roughly across his shoulder I picked up a greasy menu that rested between the sugar shaker and the hot-sauce bottle and pretended to read it through my dark lenses.

"How're the ribs, pops?" I said.

"Fine, least these here I'm eatin' is."

"Yeah? How much you know about ribs?"

He raised his head slowly, looking across at the spitted chickens revolving before the low blue rotisserie flames. "I reckon I know as much about 'em as you," he said, "and probably more, since I probably been eatin' 'em a few years longer than you, and in a few more places. What makes you think you kin come in here messing with me anyhow?"

He turned, looking straight into my face now, challenging me. He was very game and I wanted to laugh.

"Oh, take it easy," I growled. "A man can ask a question, can't he?"

"You got your answer," he said, turning completely around on the stool. "So now I guess you ready to pull your knife."

"Knife?" I said, wanting to laugh. "Who said anything about a knife?"

"That's what you thinking about. Somebody say something you don't like and you kinda fellows pull your switch blades. So all right, go ahead and pull it. I'm as ready to die as I'm gon' ever be. Let's see you, go ahead!"

He reached for the sugar shaker now, and I stood there feeling suddenly that the old man before me was not Brother Maceo at all, but someone else disguised to confuse me. The glasses were working too well. He's a game old brother, I thought, but this'll never do.

I pointed toward his plate. "I asked you about the ribs," I said, "not your ribs. Who said anything about a knife?"

"Never mind that, just go on and pull it," he said.

"Let's see you. Or is you waiting for me to turn my back. All right, here it is, here's my back," he said, turning swiftly on the stool and around again, his arm set to throw the shaker.

Customers were turning to look, were moving clear.

"What's the matter, Maceo?" someone said.

"Nothing I caint handle; this confidencing sonofabitch come in here bluffing --"

"You take it easy, old man," I said. "Don't let your mouth get your head in trouble," thinking, Why am I talking like this?

"You don't have to worry about that, sonofabitch, pull your switch blade!"

"Give it to him, Maceo, coolcrack the motherfouler!"

I marked the position of the voice by ear now, turning so that I could see Maceo, the agitator, and the customers blocking the door. Even the juke box had stopped and I could feel the danger mounting so swiftly that I moved without thinking, bounding over quickly and sweeping up a beer bottle, my body trembling.

"All right," I said, "if that's the way you want it, all right! The next one who talks out of turn gets this!"

Maceo moved and I feinted with the bottle, seeing him dodge, his arm set to throw and held only because I was crowding him; a dark old man in overalls and a gray long-billed cloth cap, who looked dreamlike through the green glasses.

"Throw it," I said. "Go on," overcome with the madness of the thing. Here I'd set out to test a disguise on a friend and now I was ready to beat him to his knees -- not because I wanted to but because of place and circumstance. Okay, okay, it was absurd and yet real and dangerous and if he moved, I'd let him have it as brutally as possible. To protect myself I'd have to, or the drunks would gang me. Maceo was set, looking at me coldly, and suddenly I heard a voice boom out, "Ain't going to be no fighting in my joint!" It was Barrelhouse. "Put them things down y'all, they cost money."

"Hell, Barrelhouse, let 'em fight!"

"They can fight in the streets, not in here -- Hey, y'all," he called "look over here ..."

I saw him now, leaning forward with a pistol in his huge fist, resting it steady upon the bar.

"Now put 'em down y'all," he said mournfully. "I done ask you to put my property down."

Brother Maceo looked from me to Barrelhouse.

"Put it down, old man," I said, thinking, Why am I acting from pride when this is not really me?

"You put yourn down," he said.

"Both of y'all put 'em down; and you, Rinehart," Barrelhouse said, gesturing at me with his pistol, "you get out of my joint and stay out. We don't need your money in here."

I started to protest, but he held up his palm.

"Now you all right with me, Rinehart, don't get me wrong. But I just can't stand trouble," Barrelhouse said.

Brother Maceo had replaced the shaker now and I put my bottle down and backed to the door.

"And Rine," Barrelhouse said, "don't go try to pull no pistol neither, 'cause this here one is loaded and I got a permit."

I backed to the door, my scalp prickling, watching them both.

"Next time don't ask no questions you don't want answered," Maceo called. "An' if you ever want to finish this argument I be right here."

I felt the outside air explode around me and I stood just beyond the door laughing with the sudden relief of the joke restored, looking back at the defiant old man in his long-billed cap and the confounded eyes of the crowd. Rinehart, Rinehart, I thought, what kind of man is Rinehart?

I was still chuckling when, in the next block, I waited for the traffic lights near a group of men who stood on the corner passing a bottle of cheap wine between them as they discussed Clifton's murder.

"What we need is some guns," one of them said. "An eye for an eye."

"Hell yes, machine guns. Pass me the sneakypete, Muckleroy."

"Wasn't for that Sullivan Law this here New York wouldn't be nothing but a shooting gallery," another man said.

"Here's the sneakypete, and don't try to find no home in that bottle."

"It's the only home I got, Muckleroy. You want to take that away from me?"

"Man, drink up and pass the damn bottle."

I started around them, hearing one of them say, "What you saying, Mr. Rinehart, how's your hammer hanging?"