Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison

". Oh, yes," Hickman said, fanning the Senator's perspiring face, "you were giving us a natural fit! All of a sudden you were playing hooky from the services and hiding from everybody-including me. Why, one time you took off and we had about three hundred folks out looking for you. We searched the streets and the alleys and the playgrounds, the candy stores and the parks, and we questioned all the children in the neighborhood-but no Bliss. We even searched the steeple of the church where the revival was being held but that only upset the pigeons and caused even more confusion when somebody knocked against the bell and set it ringing as though there had been a fire or the river was flooding.

"So then we spread out and really started hunting. I had begun to think about going to the police-which we hated to do, considering that they'd probably have made things worse-because, you see, I thought that she-that is, I thought that you might have been kidnapped. In fact, we were already headed along a downtown street when, lo and behold, we look up and see you coming out of a picture house where it was against the law for us to go! Yes, sir, there you were, coming out of there with all those people, blinking your eyes and with your face all screwed up with crying. But thank God you were all right. I was so relieved that I couldn't say a word, and while we stood at the curb watching to see what you would do, Deacon Wilhite turned to me and said, ‘Well, 'Lonzo-A. Z. -it looks like Rev. Bliss has gone and made himself an outlaw, but at least we can be thankful that he wasn't stolen into Egypt. '. And that's when you looked up and saw us and tried to run again. I tell you, Bliss, you were giving us quite a time. Quite a time."