Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison

And I named him Bliss, Hickman thought, shaking his head. Resting back in his chair now, his hands shading his eyes from the light, he stared sadly at the man on the bed. Lord, he thought, here he is at last, stretched out on his bed of pain. Maybe his dying bed. After flying so far and climbing so high and now here. Just look at him, Lord. Why does this have to be? I know it's supposed to be this way because in spite of all our prayers it is; still, why does it have to be? I'm tired; for the first time I feel old-tired, and that's the truth. And this is what's become of our Bliss. He wasn't always ours and yet he first was mine. It wasn't easy either; far from easy. My hardest trial.

Hickman, maybe she was as Christian as she thought she was, maybe she was doing just what she had to do. Then it seemed like Wickham said the Jews used to put it out there in K. C.: like killing your mother and father and then asking the court for mercy because you're an orphan. Maybe she was driven, like those gamblers who couldn't stand to win. But just think about it-coming there wrapped in a black shawl through the rutted alley over all that broken glass shining in the starlight. past all those outhouses, yard-dogs, and chicken coops, long after dark had come down. Coming into that house at a time like that. Having the nerve, the ignorant, arrogant nerve to come in there after all that had happened. Hickman, do you know that that was something? Talking about Eliza crossing the ice! -Ha! But her-having the arrogance to come there after all that had happened.