Native Son

  “Yes; here.”

  Now, what on earth did this mean? He pulled the car off Cottage Grove Avenue and drew to a curb. He turned to look at her and was startled to see that she was sitting on the sheer edge of the back seat, her face some six inches from his.

  “I scare you?” she asked softly, smiling.

  “Oh, no’m,” he mumbled, bewildered.

  He watched her through the mirror. Her tiny white hands dangled over the back of the front seat and her eyes looked out vacantly.

  “I don’t know how to say what I’m going to say,” she said.

  He said nothing. There was a long silence. What in all hell did this girl want? A street car rumbled by. Behind him, reflected in the rear mirror, he saw the traffic lights flash from green to red, and back again. Well, whatever she was going to say, he wished she would say it and get it over. This girl was strange. She did the unexpected every minute. He waited for her to speak. She took her hands from the back of the front seat and fumbled in her purse.

  “Gotta match?”

  “Yessum.”

  He dug a match from his vest pocket.

  “Strike it,” she said.

  He blinked. He struck the match and held the flame for her. She smoked awhile in silence.

  “You’re not a tattle-tale, are you?” she asked with a smile.

  He opened his mouth to reply, but no words came. What she had asked and the tone of voice in which she had asked it made him feel that he ought to have answered in some way; but what?

  “I’m not going to the University,” she said at last. “But you can forget that. I want you to drive me to the Loop. But if anyone should ask you, then I went to the University, see, Bigger?”

  “Yessum; it’s all right with me,” he mumbled.

  “I think I can trust you.”

  “Yessum.”

  “After all, I’m on your side.”

  Now, what did that mean? She was on his side. What side was he on? Did she mean that she liked colored people? Well, he had heard that about her whole family. Was she really crazy? How much did her folks know of how she acted? But if she were really crazy, why did Mr. Dalton let him drive her out?

  “I’m going to meet a friend of mine who’s also a friend of yours,” she said.

  “Friend of mine!” he could not help exclaiming.

  “Oh, you don’t know him yet,” she said, laughing.

  “Oh.”

  “Go to the Outer Drive and then to 16 Lake Street.”

  “Yessum.”

  Maybe she was talking about the Reds? That was it! But none of his friends were Reds. What was all this? If Mr. Dalton should ask him if he had taken her to the University, he would have to say yes and depend upon her to back him up. But suppose Mr. Dalton had someone watching, someone who would tell where he had really taken her? He had heard that many rich people had detectives, working for them. If only he knew what this was all about he would feel much better. And she had said that she was going to meet someone who was a friend of his. He didn’t want to meet any Communists. They didn’t have any money. He felt that it was all right for a man to go to jail for robbery, but to go to jail for fooling around with Reds was bunk. Well, he would drive her; that was what he had been hired for. But he was going to watch his step in this business. The only thing he hoped was that she would not make him lose his job. He pulled the car off the Outer Drive at Seventh Street, drove north on Michigan Boulevard to Lake Street, then headed west for two blocks, looking for number 16.

  “It’s right here, Bigger.”

  “Yessum.”

  He pulled to a stop in front of a dark building.

  “Wait,” she said, getting out of the car.

  He saw her smiling broadly at him, almost laughing. He felt that she knew every feeling and thought he had at that moment and he turned his head away in confusion. Goddamn that woman!

  “I won’t be long,” she said.

  She started off, then turned back.

  “Take it easy, Bigger. You’ll understand it better bye and bye.”

  “Yessum,” he said, trying to smile; but couldn’t.

  “Isn’t there a song like that, a song your people sing?”

  “Like what, mam?”

  “We’ll understand it better bye and bye?”

  “Oh, yessum.”

  She was an odd girl, all right. He felt something in her over and above the fear she inspired in him. She responded to him as if he were human, as if he lived in the same world as she. And he had never felt that before in a white person. But why? Was this some kind of game? The guarded feeling of freedom he had while listening to her was tangled with the hard fact that she was white and rich, a part of the world of people who told him what he could and could not do.

  He looked at the building into which she had gone; it was old and unpainted; there were no lights in the windows or doorway. Maybe she was meeting her sweetheart? If that was all, then things would straighten out. But if she had gone to meet those Communists? And what were Communists like, anyway? Was she one? What made people Communists? He remembered seeing many cartoons of Communists in newspapers and always they had flaming torches in their hands and wore beards and were trying to commit murder or set things on fire. People who acted that way were crazy. All he could recall having heard about Communists was associated in his mind with darkness, old houses, people speaking in whispers, and trade unions on strike. And this was something like it.

  He stiffened; the door into which she had gone opened. She came out, followed by a young white man. They walked to the car; but, instead of getting into the back seat, they came to the side of the car and stood, facing him. At once Bigger recognized the man as the one he had seen in the newsreel in the movie.

  “Oh, Bigger, this is Jan. And Jan, this is Bigger Thomas.”

  Jan smiled broadly, then extended an open palm toward him. Bigger’s entire body tightened with suspense and dread.

  “How are you, Bigger?”

  Bigger’s right hand gripped the steering wheel and he wondered if he ought to shake hands with this white man.

  “I’m fine,” he mumbled.

  Jan’s hand was still extended. Bigger’s right hand raised itself about three inches, then stopped in mid-air.

  “Come on and shake,” Jan said.

  Bigger extended a limp palm, his mouth open in astonishment. He felt Jan’s fingers tighten about his own. He tried to pull his hand away, ever so gently, but Jan held on, firmly, smiling.

  “We may as well get to know each other,” Jan said. “I’m a friend of Mary’s.”

  “Yessuh,” he mumbled.

  “First of all,” Jan continued, putting his foot upon the running-board, “don’t say sir to me. I’ll call you Bigger and you’ll call me Jan. That’s the way it’ll be between us. How’s that?”

  Bigger did not answer. Mary was smiling. Jan still gripped his hand and Bigger held his head at an oblique angle, so that he could, by merely shifting his eyes, look at Jan and then out into the street whenever he did not wish to meet Jan’s gaze. He heard Mary laughing softly.

  “It’s all right, Bigger,” she said. “Jan means it.”

  He flushed warm with anger. Goddamn her soul to hell! Was she laughing at him? Were they making fun of him? What was it that they wanted? Why didn’t they leave him alone? He was not bothering them. Yes, anything could happen with people like these. His entire mind and body were painfully concentrated into a single sharp point of attention. He was trying desperately to understand. He felt foolish sitting behind the steering wheel like this and letting a white man hold his hand. What would people passing along the street think? He was very conscious of his black skin and there was in him a prodding conviction that Jan and men like him had made it so that he would be conscious of that black skin. Did not white people despise a black skin? Then why was Jan doing this? Why was Mary standing there so eagerly, with shining eyes? What could they get out of this? Maybe they did not despise him? But they made
him feel his black skin by just standing there looking at him, one holding his hand and the other smiling. He felt he had no physical existence at all right then; he was something he hated, the badge of shame which he knew was attached to a black skin. It was a shadowy region, a No Man’s Land, the ground that separated the white world from the black that he stood upon. He felt naked, transparent; he felt that this white man, having helped to put him down, having helped to deform him, held him up now to look at him and be amused. At that moment he felt toward Mary and Jan a dumb, cold, and inarticulate hate.

  “Let me drive awhile,” Jan said, letting go of his hand and opening the door.

  Bigger looked at Mary. She came forward and touched his arm.

  “It’s all right, Bigger,” she said.

  He turned in the seat to get out, but Jan stopped him.

  “No; stay in and move over.”

  He slid over and Jan took his place at the wheel. He was still feeling his hand strangely; it seemed that the pressure of Jan’s fingers had left an indelible imprint. Mary was getting into the front seat, too.

  “Move over, Bigger,” she said.

  He moved closer to Jan. Mary pushed herself in, wedging tightly between him and the outer door of the car. There were white people to either side of him; he was sitting between two vast white looming walls. Never in his life had he been so close to a white woman. He smelt the odor of her hair and felt the soft pressure of her thigh against his own. Jan headed the car back to the Outer Drive, weaving in and out of the line of traffic. Soon they were speeding along the lake front, past a huge flat sheet of dully gleaming water. The sky was heavy with snow clouds and the wine was blowing strong.

  “Isn’t it glorious tonight?” she asked.

  “God, yes!” Jan said.

  Bigger listened to the tone of their voices, to their strange accents, to the exuberant phrases that flowed so freely from their lips.

  “That sky!”

  “And that water!”

  “It’s so beautiful it makes you ache just to look at it,” said Mary.

  “This is a beautiful world, Bigger,” Jan said, turning to him “Look at that skyline!”

  Bigger looked without turning his head; he just rolled his eyes Stretching to one side of him was a vast sweep of tall buildings flecked with tiny squares of yellow light.

  “We’ll own all that some day, Bigger,” Jan said with a wave of his hand. “After the revolution it’ll be ours. But we’ll have to fight for it. What a world to win, Bigger! And when that day comes, things’ll be different. There’ll be no white and no black; there’ll be no rich and no poor.”

  Bigger said nothing. The car whirred along.

  “We seem strange to you, don’t we, Bigger?” Mary asked.

  “Oh, no’m,” he breathed softly, knowing that she did not believe him, but finding it impossible to answer her in any other way.

  His arms and legs were aching from being cramped into so small a space, but he dared not move. He knew that they would not have cared if he had made himself more comfortable, but his moving would have called attention to himself and his black body. And he did not want that. These people made him feel things he did not want to feel. If he were white, if he were like them, it would have been different. But he was black. So he sat still, his arms and legs aching.

  “Say, Bigger,” asked Jan, “where can we get a good meal on the South Side?”

  “Well,” Bigger said, reflectively.

  “We want to go to a real place,” Mary said, turning to him gayly.

  “You want to go to a night club?” Bigger asked in a tone that indicated that he was simply mentioning names and not recommending places to go.

  “No; we want to eat.”

  “Look, Bigger. We want one of those places where colored people eat, not one of those show places.”

  What did these people want? When he answered his voice was neutral and toneless.

  “Well, there’s Ernie’s Kitchen Shack….”

  “That sounds good!”

  “Let’s go there, Jan,” Mary said.

  “O.K.,” Jan said. “Where is it?”

  “It’s at Forty-seventh Street and Indiana,” Bigger told them.

  Jan swung the car off the Outer Drive at Thirty-first Street and drove westward to Indiana Avenue. Bigger wanted Jan to drive faster, so that they could reach Ernie’s Kitchen Shack in the shortest possible time. That would allow him a chance to sit in the car and stretch out his cramped and aching legs while they ate. Jan turned onto Indiana Avenue and headed south. Bigger wondered what Jack and Gus and G.H. would say if they saw him sitting between two white people in a car like this. They would tease him about such a thing as long as they could remember it. He felt Mary turn in her seat. She placed her hand on his arm.

  “You know, Bigger, I’ve long wanted to go into these houses,” she said, pointing to the tall, dark apartment buildings looming to either side of them, “and just see how your people live. You know what I mean? I’ve been to England, France and Mexico, but I don’t know how people live ten blocks from me. We know so little about each other. I just want to see. I want to know these people. Never in my life have I been inside of a Negro home. Yet they must live like we live. They’re human…. There are twelve million of them…. They live in our country…. In the same city with us….” her voice trailed off wistfully.

  There was silence. The car sped through the Black Belt, past tall buildings holding black life. Bigger knew that they were thinking of his life and the life of his people. Suddenly he wanted to seize some heavy object in his hand and grip it with all the strength of his body and in some strange way rise up and stand in naked space above the speeding car and with one final blow blot it out—with himself and them in it. His heart was beating fast and he struggled to control his breath. This thing was getting the better of him; he felt that he should not give way to his feelings like this. But he could not help it. Why didn’t they leave him alone? What had he done to them? What good could they get out of sitting here making him feel so miserable?

  “Tell me where it is, Bigger,” Jan said.

  “Yessuh.”

  Bigger looked out and saw that they were at Forty-sixth Street.

  “It’s at the end of the next block, suh.”

  “Can I park along here somewhere?”

  “Oh; yessuh.”

  “Bigger, please! Don’t say sir to me…. I don’t like it. You’re a man just like I am; I’m no better than you. Maybe other white men like it. But I don’t. Look, Bigger….”

  “Yes….” Bigger paused, swallowed, and looked down at his black hands. “O.K.,” he mumbled, hoping that they did not hear the choke in his voice.

  “You see, Bigger….” Jan began.

  Mary reached her hand round back of Bigger and touched Jan’s shoulder.

  “Let’s get out,” she said hurriedly.

  Jan pulled the car to the curb and opened the door and stepped out. Bigger slipped behind the steering wheel again, glad to have room at last for his arms and legs. Mary got out of the other door. Now, he could get some rest. So intensely taken up was he with his own immediate sensations, that he did not look up until he felt something strange in the long silence. When he did look he saw, in a split second of time, Mary turn her eyes away from his face. She was looking at Jan and Jan was looking at her. There was no mistaking the meaning of the look in their eyes. To Bigger it was plainly a bewildered and questioning look, a look that asked: What on earth is wrong with him? Bigger’s teeth clamped tight and he stared straight before him.

  “Aren’t you coming with us, Bigger?” Mary asked in a sweet tone that made him want to leap at her.

  The people in Ernie’s Kitchen Shack knew him and he did not want them to see him with these white people. He knew that if he went in they would ask one another: Who’re them white folks Bigger’s hanging around with?

  “I—I…. I don’t want to go in….” he whispered breathlessly.

  “Aren
’t you hungry?” Jan asked.

  “Naw; I ain’t hungry.”

  Jan and Mary came close to the car.

  “Come and sit with us anyhow,” Jan said.

  “I…. I….” Bigger stammered.

  “It’ll be all right,” Mary said.

  “I can stay here. Somebody has to watch the car,” he said.

  “Oh, to hell with the car!” Mary said. “Come on in.”

  “I don’t want to eat,” Bigger said stubbornly.

  “Well,” Jan sighed. “If that’s the way you feel about it, we won’t go in.”

  Bigger felt trapped. Oh, Goddamn! He saw in a flash that he could have made all of this very easy if he had simply acted from the beginning as if they were doing nothing unusual. But he did not understand them; he distrusted them, really hated them. He was puzzled as to why they were treating him this way. But, after all, this was his job and it was just as painful to sit here and let them stare at him as it was to go in.

  “O.K.,” he mumbled angrily.

  He got out and slammed the door. Mary came close to him and caught his arm. He stared at her in a long silence; it was the first time he had ever looked directly at her, and he was able to do so only because he was angry.

  “Bigger,” she said, “you don’t have to come in unless you really want to. Please, don’t think…. Oh, Bigger…. We’re not trying to make you feel badly….”

  Her voice stopped. In the dim light of the street lamp Bigger saw her eyes cloud and her lips tremble. She swayed against the car He stepped backward, as though she were contaminated with an invisible contagion. Jan slipped his arm about her waist, supporting her. Bigger heard her sob softly. Good God! He had a wild impulse to turn around and walk away. He felt ensnared in a tangle of deep shadows, shadows as black as the night that stretched above his head. The way he had acted had made her cry, and yet the way she had acted had made him feel that he had to act as he had toward her. In his relations with her he felt that he was riding a seesaw; never were they on a common level; either he or she was up in the air. Mary dried her eyes and Jan whispered something to her. Bigger wondered what he could say to his mother, or the relief, or Mr. Dalton, if he left them. They would be sure to ask why he had walked off his job, and he would not be able to tell.