In this passage from the novel’s first chapter, Baldwin uses visual imagery and a flashback to show the reader the power Rufus’s violent military memories still hold. Rufus is in the middle of a conversation with Leona when this recollection interrupts his thoughts:
He laughed again. He remembered, suddenly, his days in boot camp in the South and felt again the shoe of a white officer against his mouth. He was in his white uniform, on the ground, against the red, dusty clay. Some of his colored buddies were holding him, were shouting in his ear, helping him to rise. The white officer, with a curse, had vanished, had gone forever beyond the reach of vengeance. His face was full of clay and tears and blood; he spat red blood into the red dust.
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