Explore "Three Days Before the Shooting" by Ralph Ellison on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THEY SWEPT AROUND THE far corner of the corridor in double-quick time, four dark-suited men hurrying toward me with submachine guns at the ready, followed by two men in white pulling and pushing a sheet-covered form on a smoothly rolling table. Two tense nurses, flanking the table, steadied a blood-plasma apparatus, their quick-thudding heels the dominant sound as they came on, followed by the two familiar security men, Tolliver and McKnight, armed with pistols. They moved on so swiftly that I could see old Hickman's head snap around at their approach, and then he was pulling quickly to his feet. I plunged the letter into my jacket pocket then and started forward-only to be motioned back by the hard-faced advance guards. They were swinging the table in a wide arc before the Senator's room now, opening the door and starting inside, and I got a glimpse of old Hickman's anxious eyes as they swept over the Senator's prone, white-faced form; then the door snapped shut, the security men were taking positions to either side, and old Hickman was asking, "How is he?"
"Just stand aside," Tolliver said.