Native Son

  “What all I got to do today, mam?”

  “Just wait on call. Sunday’s a dull day. Maybe Mr. or Mrs. Dalton’ll go out.”

  “Yessum.”

  He finished the oatmeal.

  “You want me to do anything now?”

  “No. But you’re not through eating. You want some ham and eggs?”

  “No’m. I got a plenty.”

  “Well, it’s right here for you. Don’t be afraid to ask for it.”

  “I reckon I’ll see about the fire now.”

  “All right, Bigger. Just you listen for the bell about two o’clock. Till then I don’t think there’ll be anything.”

  He went to the basement. The fire was blazing. The embers glowed red and the draft droned upward. It did not need any coal. Again he looked round the basement, into every nook and corner, to see if he had left any trace of what had happened last night. There was none.

  He went to his room and lay on the bed. Well; here he was now. What would happen? The room was quiet. No! He heard something! He cocked his head, listening. He caught faint sounds of pots and pans rattling in the kitchen below. He got up and walked to the far end of the room; the sounds came louder. He heard the soft but firm tread of Peggy as she walked across the kitchen floor. She’s right under me, he thought. He stood still, listening. He heard Mrs. Dalton’s voice, then Peggy’s. He stooped and put his ear to the floor. Were they talking about Mary? He could not make out what they were saying. He stood up and looked round. A foot from him was the door of the clothes closet. He opened it; the voices came clearly. He went into the closet and the planks squeaked; he stopped. Had they heard him? Would they think he was snooping? Oh! He had an idea! He got his suitcase and opened it and took out an armful of clothes. If anyone came into the room it would seem that he was putting his clothes away He went into the closet and listened.

  “…you mean the car stayed out all night in the driveway?”

  “Yes; he said she told him to leave it there.”

  “What time was that?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Dalton. I didn’t ask him.”

  “I don’t understand this at all.”

  “Oh, she’s all right. I don’t think you need worry.”

  “But she didn’t even leave a note, Peggy. That’s not like Mary. Even when she ran away to New York that time she at least left a note.”

  “Maybe she hasn’t gone. Maybe something came up and she stayed out all night, Mrs. Dalton.”

  “But why would she leave the car out?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And he said a man was with her?”

  “It was that Jan, I think, Mrs. Dalton.”

  “Jan?”

  “Yes; the one who was with her in Florida.”

  “She just won’t leave those awful people alone.”

  “He called here this morning, asking for her.”

  “Called here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He seemed sort of peeved when I told him she was gone.”

  “What can that poor child be up to? She told me she was not seeing him any more.”

  “Maybe she had him to call, Mrs. Dalton….”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, mam, I was kind of thinking that maybe she’s with him again, like that time she was in Florida. And maybe she had him to call to see if we knew she was gone….”

  “Oh, Peggy!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, mam…. Maybe she stayed with some friends of hers?”

  “But she was in her room at two o’clock this morning, Peggy. Whose house would she go to at that hour?”

  “Mrs. Dalton, I noticed something when I went to her room this morning.”

  “What?”

  “Well, mam, it looks like her bed wasn’t slept in at all. The cover wasn’t even pulled back. Looks like somebody had just stretched out awhile and then got up….”

  “Oh!”

  Bigger listened intently, but there was silence. They knew that something was wrong now. He heard Mrs. Dalton’s voice again, quavering with doubt and fear.

  “Then she didn’t sleep here last night?”

  “Looks like she didn’t.”

  “Did that boy say Jan was in the car?”

  “Yes. I thought something was strange about the car being left out in the snow all night, and so I asked him. He said she told him to leave the car there and he said Jan was in it.”

  “Listen, Peggy….”

  “Yes, Mrs. Dalton.”

  “Mary was drunk last night. I hope nothing’s happened to her.”

  “Oh, what a pity!”

  “I went to her room just after she came in…. She was too drunk to talk. She was drunk, I tell you. I never thought she’d come home in that condition.”

  “She’ll be all right, Mrs. Dalton. I know she will.”

  There was another long silence. Bigger wondered if Mrs. Dalton was on her way to his room. He went back to the bed and lay down, listening. There were no sounds. He lay a long time, hearing nothing; then he heard footsteps in the kitchen again. He hurried into the closet.

  “Peggy!”

  “Yes, Mrs. Dalton.”

  “Listen, I just felt around in Mary’s room. Something’s wrong. She didn’t finish packing her trunk. At least half of her things are still there. She said she was planning to go to some dances in Detroit and she didn’t take the new things she bought.”

  “Maybe she didn’t go to Detroit.”

  “But where is she?”

  Bigger stopped listening, feeling fear for the first time. He had not thought that the trunk was not fully packed. How could he explain that she had told him to take a half-packed trunk to the station? Oh, shucks! The girl was drunk. That was it. Mary was so drunk that she didn’t know what she was doing. He would say that she had told him to take it and he had just taken it; that’s all. If someone asked him why he had taken a half-packed trunk to the station, he would tell them that that was no different from all the other foolish things that Mary had told him to do that night. Had not people seen him eating with her and Jan in Ernie’s Kitchen Shack? He would say that both of them were drunk and that he had done what they told him because it was his job. He listened again to the voices.

  “…and after a while send that boy to me. I want to talk to him.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Dalton.”

  Again he lay on the bed. He would have to go over his story and make it foolproof. Maybe he had done wrong in taking that trunk? Maybe it would have been better to have carried Mary down in his arms and burnt her? But he had put her in the trunk because of the fear of someone’s seeing her in his arms. That was the only way he could have gotten her down out of the room. Oh, hell, what had happened had happened and he would stick to his story. He went over the story again, fastening every detail firmly in his mind. He would say that she had been drunk, sloppy drunk. He lay on the soft bed in the warm room listening to the steam hiss in the radiator and thinking drowsily and lazily of how drunk she had been and of how he had lugged her up the steps and of how he had pushed the pillow over her face and of how he had put her in the trunk and of how he had struggled with the trunk on the dark stairs and of how his fingers had burned while he had stumbled down the stairs with the heavy trunk going bump-bump-bump so loud that surely all the world must have heard it….

  He jumped awake, hearing a knock at the door. His heart raced. He sat up and stared sleepily around the room. Had someone knocked? He looked at his watch; it was three o’clock. Gee! He must have slept through the bell that was to ring at two. The knock came again.

  “O.K.!” he mumbled.

  “This is Mrs. Dalton!”

  “Yessum. Just a minute.”

  He reached the door in two long steps, then stood a moment trying to collect himself. He blinked his eyes and wet his lips. He opened the door and saw Mrs. Dalton smiling before him, dressed in white, her pale face held as it had been when she was standing
in the darkness while he had smothered Mary on the bed.

  “Y-y-yes, mam,” he stammered. “I—I was asleep….”

  “You didn’t get much sleep last night, did you?”

  “No’m,” he drawled, afraid of what she might mean.

  “Peggy rang for you three times, and you didn’t answer.”

  “I’m sorry, mam….”

  “That’s all right. I wanted to ask you about last night…. Oh, you took the trunk to the station, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “Yessum. This morning,” he said, detecting hesitancy and confusion in her voice.

  “I see,” said Mrs. Dalton. She stood with her face tilted upward in the semi-darkness of the hallway. He had his hand on the doorknob, waiting, his muscles taut. He had to be careful with his answers now. And yet he knew he had a certain protection; he knew that a certain element of shame would keep Mrs. Dalton from asking him too much and letting him know that she was worried. He was a boy and she was an old woman. He was the hired and she was the hirer. And there was a certain distance to be kept between them.

  “You left the car in the driveway last night, didn’t you?”

  “Yessum. I was about to put it up,” he said, indicating that his only concern was with keeping his job and doing his duties. “But she told me to leave it.”

  “And was someone with her?”

  “Yessum. A gentleman.”

  “That must have been pretty late, wasn’t it?”

  “Yessum. A little before two, mam.”

  “And you took the trunk down a little before two?”

  “Yessum. She told me to.”

  “She took you to her room?”

  He did not want her to think that he had been alone in the room with Mary. Quickly, he recast the story in his mind.

  “Yessum. They went up….”

  “Oh, he was with her?”

  “Yessum.”

  “I see….”

  “Anything wrong, mam?”

  “Oh, no! I—I—I…. No; there’s nothing wrong.”

  She stood in the doorway and he looked at her light-grey blind eyes, eyes almost as white as her face and hair and dress. He knew that she was really worried and wanted to ask him more questions. But he knew that she would not want to hear him tell of how drunk her daughter had been. After all, he was black and she was white. He was poor and she was rich. She would be ashamed to let him think that something was so wrong in her family that she had to ask him, a black servant, about it. He felt confident.

  “Will there be anything right now, mam?”

  “No. In fact, you may take the rest of the day off, if you like. Mr. Dalton is not feeling well and we’re not going out.”

  “Thank you, mam.”

  She turned away and he shut the door; he stood listening to the soft whisper of her shoes die away down the hall, then on the stairs. He pictured her groping her way, her hands touching the walls. She must know this house like a book, he thought. He trembled with excitement. She was white and he was black; she was rich and he was poor; she was old and he was young; she was the boss and he was the worker. He was safe; yes. When he heard the kitchen door open and shut he went to the closet and listened again. But there were no sounds.

  Well, he would go out. To go out now would be the answer to the feeling of strain that had come over him while talking to Mrs. Dalton. He would go and see Bessie. That was it! He got his cap and coat and went to the basement. The suction of air through the furnace moaned and the fire was white-hot; there was enough coal to last until he came back.

  He went to Forty-seventh Street and stood on the corner to wait for a car. Yes, Bessie was the one he wanted to see now. Funny, he had not thought of her much during the last day and night. Too many exciting things had been happening. He had had no need to think of her. But now he had to forget and relax and he wanted to see her. She was always home on Sunday afternoons. He wanted to see her very badly; he felt that he would be stronger to go through tomorrow if he saw her.

  The street car came and he got on, thinking of how things had gone that day. No; he did not think they would suspect him of anything. He was black. Again he felt the roll of crisp bills in his pocket; if things went wrong he could always run away. He wondered how much money was in the roll; he had not even counted it. He would see when he got to Bessie’s. No; he need not be afraid. He felt the gun nestling close to his skin. That gun could always make folks stand away and think twice before bothering him.

  But of the whole business there was one angle that bothered him; he should have gotten more money out of it; he should have planned it. He had acted too hastily and accidentally. Next time things would be much different; he would plan and arrange so that he would have money enough to keep him a long time. He looked out of the car window and then round at the white faces near him. He wanted suddenly to stand up and shout, telling them that he had killed a rich white girl, a girl whose family was known to all of them. Yes; if he did that a look of startled horror would come over their faces. But, no. He would not do that, even though the satisfaction would be keen. He was so greatly outnumbered that he would be arrested, tried, and executed. He wanted the keen thrill of startling them, but felt that the cost was too great. He wished that he had the power to say what he had done without fear of being arrested; he wished that he could be an idea in their minds: that his black face and the image of his smothering Mary and cutting off her head and burning her could hover before their eyes as a terrible picture of reality which they could see and feel and yet not destroy. He was not satisfied with the way things stood now; he was a man who had come in sight of a goal, then had won it, and in winning it had seen just within his grasp another goal, higher, greater. He had learned to shout and had shouted and no ear had heard him; he had just learned to walk and was walking but could not see the ground beneath his feet; he had long been yearning for weapons to hold in his hands and suddenly found that his hands held weapons that were invisible.

  The car stopped a block from Bessie’s home and he got off. When he reached the building in which she lived, he looked up to the second floor and saw a light burning in her window. The street lamps came on suddenly, lighting up the snow-covered sidewalks with a yellow sheen. It had gotten dark early. The lamps were round hazy balls of light frozen into motionlessness, anchored in space and kept from blowing away in the icy wind by black steel posts. He went in and rang the bell and, in answer to a buzzer, mounted the stairs and found Bessie smiling at him in her door.

  “Hello, stranger!”

  “Hi, Bessie.”

  He stood face to face with her, then reached for her hands. She shied away.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You know what’s the matter.”

  “Naw, I don’t.”

  “What you reaching for me for?”

  “I want to kiss you, honey.”

  “You don’t want to kiss me.”

  “Why?”

  “I ought to be asking you that.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I saw you with your white friends last night.”

  “Aw; they wasn’t my friends.”

  “Who was they?”

  “I work for ’em.”

  “And you eat with ’em.”

  “Aw, Bessie….”

  “You didn’t even speak to me.”

  “I did!”

  “You just growled and waved your hand.”

  “Aw, baby. I was working then. You understand.”

  “I thought maybe you was ’shamed of me, sitting there with that white gal all dressed in silk and satin.”

  “Aw, hell, Bessie. Come on. Don’t act that way.”

  “You really want to kiss me?”

  “Sure. What you think I came here for?”

  “How come you so long seeing me, then?”

  “I told you I been working, honey. You saw me last night. Come on. Don’t act this way.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her
head.

  He knew that she was trying to see how badly he wanted her, trying to see how much power she still had over him. He grabbed her arm and pulled her to him, kissing her long and hard, feeling as he did so that she was not responding. When he took his lips away he looked at her with eyes full of reproach and at the same time he felt his teeth clamping and his lips tingling slightly with rising passion.

  “Let’s go in,” he said.

  “If you want to.”

  “Sure I want to.”

  “You stayed away so long.”

  “Aw, don’t be that way.”

  They went in.

  “How come you acting so cold tonight?” he asked.

  “You could have dropped me a postcard,” she said.

  “Aw, I just forgot it.”

  “Or you could’ve phoned.”

  “Honey, I was busy.”

  “Looking at that old white gal, I reckon.”

  “Aw, hell!”

  “You don’t love me no more.”

  “The hell I don’t.”

  “You could’ve come by just for five minutes.”

  “Baby, I was busy.”

  When he kissed her this time she responded a little. To let her know that he wanted her he allowed her to draw his tongue into her mouth.

  “I’m tired tonight,” she sighed.

  “Who you been seeing?”

  “Nobody.”

  “What you doing tired?”

  “If you want to talk that way you can leave right now. I didn’t ask you who you been seeing to make you stay away this long, did I?”

  “You all on edge tonight.”

  “You could have just said, ‘Hello, dog!’”

  “Really, honey. I was busy.”

  “You was setting there at that table with them white folks like you was a lawyer or something. You wouldn’t even look at me when I spoke to you.”

  “Aw, forget it. Let’s talk about something else.”

  He attempted to kiss her again and she shied away.

  “Come on, honey.”

  “Who you been with?”

  “Nobody. I swear. I been working. And I been thinking hard about you. I been missing you. Listen, I got a room all my own where I’m working. Some nights you can stay there with me, see? Gee, I been missing you awful, honey. Soon’s I got time I came right over.”