Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison Read Free Book Online Page A

So much so, that sometimes I don't know whether it was his vision or mine . . ."
    He chuckled softly, wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes.
    "But of course it was his; I only assisted. I came down with him to see the barren land and did what I could to render assistance. And it has been my pleasant fate to return each spring and observe the changes that the years have wrought. That has been more pleasant and satisfying to me than my own work. It has been a pleasant fate, indeed."
    His voice was mellow and loaded with more meaning than I could fathom. As I drove, faded and yellowed pictures of the school's early days displayed in the library flashed across the screen of my mind, coming fitfully and fragmentarily to life --photographs of men and women in wagons drawn by mule teams and oxen, dressed in black, dusty clothing, people who seemed almost without individuality, a black mob that seemed to be waiting, looking with blank faces, and among them the inevitable collection of white men and women in smiles, clear of features, striking, elegant and confident. Until now, and although I could recognize the Founder and Dr. Bledsoe among them, the figures in the photographs had never seemed actually to have been alive, but were more like signs or symbols one found on the last pages of the dictionary . . . But now I felt that I was sharing in a great work and, with the car leaping leisurely beneath the pressure of my foot, I identified myself with the rich man reminiscing on the rear seat
    . . .
    "A pleasant fate," he repeated, "and I hope yours will be as pleasant."
    "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," I said, pleased that he wished something pleasant for me. But at the same time I was puzzled: How could anyone's fate be pleasant? I had always thought of it as something painful. No one I knew spoke of it as pleasant --not even Woodridge, who made us read Greek plays.
    We were beyond the farthest extension of the school-owned lands now and I suddenly decided to turn off the highway, down a road that seemed unfamiliar. There were no trees and the air was brilliant. Far down the road the sun glared cruelly against a tin sign nailed to a barn. A lone figure bending over a hoe on the hillside raised up wearily and waved, more a shadow against the skyline than a man.
    "How far have we come?" I heard over my shoulder.
    "Just about a mile, sir."
    "I don't remember this section," he said.
    I didn't answer. I was thinking of the first person who'd mentioned anything like fate in my presence, my grandfather. There had been nothing pleasant about it and I had tried to forget it. Now, riding here in the powerful car with this white man who was so pleased with what he called his fate, I felt a sense of dread. My grandfather would have called this treachery and I could not understand in just what way it was. Suddenly I grew guilty at the realization that the white man might have thought so too. What would he have thought? Did he know that Negroes like my grandfather had been freed during those days just before the college had been founded?
    As we came to a side road I saw a team of oxen hitched to a broken-down wagon, the ragged driver dozing on the seat beneath the shade of a clump of trees.
    "Did you see that, sir?" I asked over my shoulder.
    "What was it?"
    "The ox team, sir."
    "Oh! No, I can't see it for the trees," he said looking back. "It's good timber."
    "I'm sorry, sir. Shall I turn back?"
    "No, it isn't much," he said. "Go on."
    I drove on, remembering the lean, hungry face of the sleeping man. He was the kind of white man I feared. The brown fields swept out to the horizon. A flock of birds dipped down, circled, swung up and out as though linked by invisible strings. Waves of heat danced above the engine hood. The tires sang over the highway. Finally I overcame my timidity and asked him:
    "Sir, why did you become interested in the school?"
    "I think," he said, thoughtfully, raising his voice, "it was because I felt even as a young man