Native Son

  “Goddamn!”

  The rat leaped. Bigger sprang to one side. The rat stopped under a chair and let out a furious screak. Bigger moved slowly backward toward the door.

  “Gimme that skillet, Buddy,” he asked quietly, not taking his eyes from the rat.

  Buddy extended his hand. Bigger caught the skillet and lifted it high in the air. The rat scuttled across the floor and stopped again at the box and searched quickly for the hole; then it reared once more and bared long yellow fangs, piping shrilly, belly quivering.

  Bigger aimed and let the skillet fly with a heavy grunt. There was a shattering of wood as the box caved in. The woman screamed and hid her face in her hands. Bigger tiptoed forward and peered.

  “I got ’im,” he muttered, his clenched teeth bared in a smile. “By God, I got ’im.”

  He kicked the splintered box out of the way and the flat black body of the rat lay exposed, its two long yellow tusks showing distinctly. Bigger took a shoe and pounded the rat’s head, crushing it, cursing hysterically:

  “You sonofabitch!”

  The woman on the bed sank to her knees and buried her face in the quilts and sobbed:

  “Lord, Lord, have mercy….”

  “Aw, Mama,” Vera whimpered, bending to her. “Don’t cry. It’s dead now.”

  The two brothers stood over the dead rat and spoke in tones of awed admiration.

  “Gee, but he’s a big bastard.”

  “That sonofabitch could cut your throat.”

  “He’s over a foot long.”

  “How in hell do they get so big?”

  “Eating garbage and anything else they can get.”

  “Look, Bigger, there’s a three-inch rip in your pantleg.”

  “Yeah; he was after me, all right.”

  “Please, Bigger, take ’im out,” Vera begged.

  “Aw, don’t be so scary,” Buddy said.

  The woman on the bed continued to sob. Bigger took a piece of newspaper and gingerly lifted the rat by its tail and held it out at arm’s length.

  “Bigger, take ’im out,” Vera begged again.

  Bigger laughed and approached the bed with the dangling rat, swinging it to and fro like a pendulum, enjoying his sister’s fear.

  “Bigger!” Vera gasped convulsively; she screamed and swayed and closed her eyes and fell headlong across her mother and rolled limply from the bed to the floor.

  “Bigger, for God’s sake!” the mother sobbed, rising and bending over Vera. “Don’t do that! Throw that rat out!”

  He laid the rat down and started to dress.

  “Bigger, help me lift Vera to the bed,” the mother said.

  He paused and turned round.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, feigning ignorance.

  “Do what I asked you, will you, boy?”

  He went to the bed and helped his mother lift Vera. Vera’s eyes were closed. He turned away and finished dressing. He wrapped the rat in a newspaper and went out of the door and down the stairs and put it into a garbage can at the corner of an alley. When he returned to the room his mother was still bent over Vera, placing a wet towel upon her head. She straightened and faced him, her cheeks and eyes wet with tears and her lips tight with anger.

  “Boy, sometimes I wonder what makes you act like you do.”

  “What I do now?” he demanded belligerently.

  “Sometimes you act the biggest fool I ever saw.”

  “What you talking about?”

  “You scared your sister with that rat and she fainted! Ain’t you got no sense at all?”

  “Aw, I didn’t know she was that scary.”

  “Buddy!” the mother called.

  “Yessum.”

  “Take a newspaper and spread it over that spot.”

  “Yessum.”

  Buddy opened out a newspaper and covered the smear of blood on the floor where the rat had been crushed. Bigger went to the window and stood looking out abstractedly into the street. His mother glared at his back.

  “Bigger, sometimes I wonder why I birthed you,” she said bitterly.

  Bigger looked at her and turned away.

  “Maybe you oughtn’t’ve. Maybe you ought to left me where I was.”

  “You shut your sassy mouth!”

  “Aw, for Chrissakes!” Bigger said, lighting a cigarette.

  “Buddy, pick up them skillets and put ’em in the sink,” the mother said.

  “Yessum.”

  Bigger walked across the floor and sat on the bed. His mother’s eyes followed him.

  “We wouldn’t have to live in this garbage dump if you had any manhood in you,” she said.

  “Aw, don’t start that again.”

  “How you feel, Vera?” the mother asked.

  Vera raised her head and looked about the room as though expecting to see another rat.

  “Oh, Mama!”

  “You poor thing!”

  “I couldn’t help it. Bigger scared me.”

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “I bumped my head.”

  “Here; take it easy. You’ll be all right.”

  “How come Bigger acts that way?” Vera asked, crying again.

  “He’s just crazy,” the mother said. “Just plain dumb black crazy.”

  “I’ll be late for my sewing class at the Y.W.C.A.,” Vera said.

  “Here; stretch out on the bed. You’ll feel better in a little while,” the mother said.

  She left Vera on the bed and turned a pair of cold eyes upon Bigger.

  “Suppose you wake up some morning and find your sister dead? What would you think then?” she asked. “Suppose those rats cut our veins at night when we sleep? Naw! Nothing like that ever bothers you! All you care about is your own pleasure! Even when the relief offers you a job you won’t take it till they threaten to cut off your food and starve you! Bigger, honest, you the most no-countest man I ever seen in all my life!”

  “You done told me that a thousand times,” he said, not looking round.

  “Well, I’m telling you agin! And mark my word, some of these days you going to set down and cry. Some of these days you going to wish you had made something out of yourself, instead of just a tramp. But it’ll be too late then.”

  “Stop prophesying about me,” he said.

  “I prophesy much as I please! And if you don’t like it, you can get out. We can get along without you. We can live in one room just like we living now, even with you gone,” she said.

  “Aw, for Chrissakes!” he said, his voice filled with nervous irritation.

  “You’ll regret how you living some day,” she went on. “If you don’t stop running with that gang of yours and do right you’ll end up where you never thought you would. You think I don’t know what you boys is doing, but I do. And the gallows is at the end of the road you traveling, boy. Just remember that.” She turned and looked at Buddy. “Throw that box outside, Buddy.”

  “Yessum.”

  There was silence. Buddy took the box out. The mother went behind the curtain to the gas stove. Vera sat up in bed and swung her feet to the floor.

  “Lay back down, Vera,” the mother said.

  “I feel all right now, Ma. I got to go to my sewing class.”

  “Well, if you feel like it, set the table,” the mother said, going behind the curtain again. “Lord, I get so tired of this I don’t know what to do,” her voice floated plaintively from behind the curtain. “All I ever do is try to make a home for you children and you don’t care.”

  “Aw, Ma,” Vera protested. “Don’t say that.”

  “Vera, sometimes I just want to lay down and quit.”

  “Ma, please don’t say that.”

  “I can’t last many more years, living like this.”

  “I’ll be old enough to work soon, Ma.”

  “I reckon I’ll be dead then. I reckon God’ll call me home.”

  Vera went behind the curtain and Bigger heard her trying to comfort his mother. He shut thei
r voices out of his mind. He hated his family because he knew that they were suffering and that he was powerless to help them. He knew that the moment he allowed himself to feel to its fulness how they lived, the shame and misery of their lives, he would be swept out of himself with fear and despair. So he held toward them an attitude of iron reserve; he lived with them, but behind a wall, a curtain. And toward himself he was even more exacting. He knew that the moment he allowed what his life meant to enter fully into his consciousness, he would either kill himself or someone else. So he denied himself and acted tough.

  He got up and crushed his cigarette upon the window sill. Vera came into the room and placed knives and forks upon the table.

  “Get ready to eat, you-all,” the mother called.

  He sat at the table. The odor of frying bacon and boiling coffee drifted to him from behind the curtain. His mother’s voice floated to him in song.

  Life is like a mountain railroad

  With an engineer that’s brave

  We must make the run successful

  From the cradle to the grave….

  The song irked him and he was glad when she stopped and came into the room with a pot of coffee and a plate of crinkled bacon. Vera brought the bread in and they sat down. His mother closed her eyes and lowered her head and mumbled, “Lord, we thank Thee for the food You done placed before us for the nourishment of our bodies. Amen.” She lifted her eyes and without changing her tone of voice, said, “You going to have to learn to get up earlier than this, Bigger, to hold a job.”

  He did not answer or look up.

  “You want me to pour you some coffee?” Vera asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You going to take the job, ain’t you, Bigger?” his mother asked.

  He laid down his fork and stared at her.

  “I told you last night I was going to take it. How many times you want to ask me?”

  “Well, don’t bite her head off,” Vera said. “She only asked you a question.”

  “Pass the bread and stop being smart.”

  “You know you have to see Mr. Dalton at five-thirty,” his mother said.

  “You done said that ten times.”

  “I don’t want you to forget, son.”

  “And you know how you can forget,” Vera said.

  “Aw, lay off Bigger,” Buddy said. “He told you he was going to take the job.”

  “Don’t tell ’em nothing,” Bigger said.

  “You shut your mouth, Buddy, or get up from this table,” the mother said. “I’m not going to take any stinking sass from you. One fool in the family’s enough.”

  “Lay off, Ma,” Buddy said.

  “Bigger’s setting here like he ain’t glad to get a job,” she said.

  “What you want me to do? Shout?” Bigger asked.

  “Oh, Bigger!” his sister said.

  “I wish you’d keep your big mouth out of this!” he told his sister.

  “If you get that job,” his mother said in a low, kind tone of voice, busy slicing a loaf of bread, “I can fix up a nice place for you children. You could be comfortable and not have to live like pigs.”

  “Bigger ain’t decent enough to think of nothing like that,” Vera said.

  “God, I wish you-all would let me eat,” Bigger said.

  His mother talked on as though she had not heard him and he stopped listening.

  “Ma’s talking to you, Bigger,” Vera said.

  “So what?”

  “Don’t be that way, Bigger!”

  He laid down his fork and his strong black fingers gripped the edge of the table; there was silence save for the tinkling of his brother’s fork against a plate. He kept staring at his sister till her eyes fell.

  “I wish you’d let me eat,” he said again.

  As he ate he felt that they were thinking of the job he was to get that evening and it made him angry; he felt that they had tricked him into a cheap surrender.

  “I need some carfare,” he said.

  “Here’s all I got,” his mother said, pushing a quarter to the side of his plate.

  He put the quarter in his pocket and drained his cup of coffee in one long swallow. He got his coat and cap and went to the door.

  “You know, Bigger,” his mother said, “if you don’t take that job the relief’ll cut us off. We won’t have any food.”

  “I told you I’d take it!” he shouted and slammed the door.

  He went down the steps into the vestibule and stood looking out into the street through the plate glass of the front door. Now and then a street car rattled past over steel tracks. He was sick of his life at home. Day in and day out there was nothing but shouts and bickering. But what could he do? Each time he asked himself that question his mind hit a blank wall and he stopped thinking. Across the street directly in front of him, he saw a truck pull to a stop at the curb and two white men in overalls got out with pails and brushes. Yes, he could take the job at Dalton’s and be miserable, or he could refuse it and starve. It maddened him to think that he did not have a wider choice of action. Well, he could not stand here all day like this. What was he to do with himself? He tried to decide if he wanted to buy a ten-cent magazine, or go to a movie, or go to the poolroom and talk with the gang, or just loaf around. With his hands deep in his pockets, another cigarette slanting across his chin, he brooded and watched the men at work across the street. They were pasting a huge colored poster to a signboard. The poster showed a white face.

  “That’s Buckley!” He spoke softly to himself. “He’s running for State’s Attorney again.” The men were slapping the poster with wet brushes. He looked at the round florid face and wagged his head. “I bet that sonofabitch rakes off a million bucks in graft a year. Boy, if I was in his shoes for just one day I’d never have to worry again.”

  When the men were through they gathered up their pails and brushes and got into the truck and drove off. He looked at the poster: the white face was fleshy but stern; one hand was uplifted and its index finger pointed straight out into the street at each passer-by. The poster showed one of those faces that looked straight at you when you looked at it and all the while you were walking and turning your head to look at it it kept looking unblinkingly back at you until you got so far from it you had to take your eyes away, and then it stopped, like a movie blackout. Above the top of the poster were tall red letters: YOU CAN’T WIN!

  He snuffed his cigarette and laughed silently. “You crook,” he mumbled, shaking his head. “You let whoever pays you off win!” He opened the door and met the morning air. He went along the sidewalk with his head down, fingering the quarter in his pocket. He stopped and searched all of his pockets; in his vest pocket he found a lone copper cent. That made a total of twenty-six cents, fourteen cents of which would have to be saved for carfare to Mr. Dalton’s; that is, if he decided to take the job. In order to buy a magazine and go to the movies he would have to have at least twenty cents more. “Goddammit, I’m always broke!” he mumbled.

  He stood on the corner in the sunshine, watching cars and people pass. He needed more money; if he did not get more than he had now he would not know what to do with himself for the rest of the day. He wanted to see a movie; his senses hungered for it. In a movie he could dream without effort; all he had to do was lean back in a seat and keep his eyes open.

  He thought of Gus and G.H. and Jack. Should he go to the poolroom and talk with them? But there was no use in his going unless they were ready to do what they had been long planning to do. If they could, it would mean some sure and quick money. From three o’clock to four o’clock in the afternoon there was no policeman on duty in the block where Blum’s Delicatessen was and it would be safe. One of them could hold a gun on Blum and keep him from yelling; one could watch the front door; one could watch the back; and one could get the money from the box under the counter. Then all four of them could lock Blum in the store and run out through the back and duck down the alley and meet an hour later, either at Doc’s poolr
oom or at the South Side Boys’ Club, and split the money.

  Holding up Blum ought not take more than two minutes, at the most. And it would be their last job. But it would be the toughest one that they had ever pulled. All the other times they had raided newsstands, fruit stands, and apartments. And, too, they had never held up a white man before. They had always robbed Negroes. They felt that it was much easier and safer to rob their own people, for they knew that white policemen never really searched diligently for Negroes who committed crimes against other Negroes. For months they had talked of robbing Blum’s, but had not been able to bring themselves to do it. They had the feeling that the robbing of Blum’s would be a violation of ultimate taboo; it would be a trespassing into territory where the full wrath of an alien white world would be turned loose upon them; in short, it would be a symbolic challenge of the white world’s rule over them; a challenge which they yearned to make, but were afraid to. Yes; if they could rob Blum’s, it would be a real hold-up, in more senses than one. In comparison, all of their other jobs had been play.

  “Good-bye, Bigger.”

  He looked up and saw Vera passing with a sewing kit dangling from her arm. She paused at the corner and came back to him.

  “Now, what you want?”

  “Bigger, please…. You’re getting a good job now. Why don’t you stay away from Jack and Gus and G.H. and keep out of trouble?”

  “You keep your big mouth out of my business!”

  “But, Bigger!”

  “Go on to school, will you!”

  She turned abruptly and walked on. He knew that his mother had been talking to Vera and Buddy about him, telling them that if he got into any more trouble he would be sent to prison and not just to the reform school, where they sent him last time. He did not mind what his mother said to Buddy about him. Buddy was all right. Tough, plenty. But Vera was a sappy girl; she did not have any more sense than to believe everything she was told.

  He walked toward the poolroom. When he got to the door he saw Gus half a block away, coming toward him. He stopped and waited. It was Gus who had first thought of robbing Blum’s.

  “Hi, Bigger!”

  “What you saying, Gus?”