Black Boy

  “You’re all right, Shorty, you sonofabitch,” he said.

  “I know it!” Shorty screamed, then let his voice trail off in a gale of wild laughter.

  I witnessed this scene or its variant at least a score of times and I felt no anger or hatred, only disgust and loathing. Once I asked him:

  “How in God’s name can you do that?”

  “I needed a quarter and I got it,” he said soberly, proudly.

  “But a quarter can’t pay you for what he did to you,” I said.

  “Listen, nigger,” he said to me, “my ass is tough and quarters is scarce.”

  I never discussed the subject with him after that.

  Other Negroes worked in the building: an old man whom we called Edison; his son, John; and a night janitor who answered to the name of Dave. At noon, when I was not running errands, I would join the rest of the Negroes in a little room at the front of the building overlooking the street. Here, in this underworld pocket of the building, we munched our lunches and discussed the ways of white folks toward Negroes. When two or more of us were talking, it was impossible for this subject not to come up. Each of us hated and feared the whites, yet had a white man put in a sudden appearance we would have assumed silent, obedient smiles.

  To our minds the white folks formed a kind of superworld: what was said by them during working hours was rehashed and weighed here; how they looked; what they wore; what moods they were in; who had outdistanced whom in business; who was replacing whom on the job; who was getting fired and who was getting hired. But never once did we openly say that we occupied none but subordinate positions in the building. Our talk was restricted to the petty relations which formed the core of life for us.

  But under all our talk floated a latent sense of violence; the whites had drawn a line over which we dared not step and we accepted that line because our bread was at stake. But within our boundaries we, too, drew a line that included our right to bread regardless of the indignities or degradations involved in getting it. If a white man had sought to keep us from obtaining a job, or enjoying the rights of citizenship, we would have bowed silently to his power. But if he had sought to deprive us of a dime, blood might have been split. Hence, our daily lives were so bound up with trivial objectives that to capitulate when challenged was tantamount to surrendering the right to life itself. Our anger was like the anger of children, passing quickly from one petty grievance to another, from the memory of one slight wrong to another.

  “You know what the bastard Olin said to me this morning?” John would ask, biting into a juicy hamburger.

  “What?” Shorty would ask.

  “Well, I brought him his change from paying his gas bill and he said: ‘Put it here in my pocket; my hands are dirty,’” John said. “Hunh…I just laid the money on the bench besides him. I ain’t no personal slave to him and I’ll be damned if I’ll put his own money in his own pocket.”

  “Hell, you’re right,” Shorty would say.

  “White folks just don’t think,” old man Edison would say.

  “You sure got to watch ’em,” Dave, the night janitor, would say. (He would have slept in the room on a cot after his night’s cleaning; he would be ready now to keep a date with some girl friend.)

  “Falk sent me to have his suit pressed,” I would say. “He didn’t give me a penny. Told me he would remember it on payday.”

  “Ain’t that some nerve?” John would say.

  “You can’t eat his memories,” Shorty would say.

  “But you got to keep on doing them favors,” old man Edison would say. “If you don’t, they won’t like you.”

  “I’m going north one of these days,” Shorty would say.

  We would all laugh, knowing that Shorty would never leave, that he depended too much upon the whites for the food he ate.

  “What would you do up north?” I would ask Shorty.

  “I’d pass for Chinese,” Shorty would say.

  And we would laugh again. The lunch hour would pass and we would go back to work, but there would be in our faces not one whit of the sentiment we had felt during the hour of discussion.

  One day I went to the optical counter of a department store to deliver a pair of eyeglasses. The counter was empty of customers and a tall, florid-faced white man looked at me curiously. He was unmistakably a Yankee, for his physical build differed sharply from that of the lanky Southerner.

  “Will you please sign for this, sir?” I asked, presenting the account book and the eyeglasses.

  He picked up the book and the glasses, but his eyes were still upon me.

  “Say, boy, I’m from the North,” he said quietly.

  I held very still. Was this a trap? He had mentioned a tabooed subject and I wanted to wait until I knew what he meant. Among the topics that southern white men did not like to discuss with Negroes were the following: American white women; the Ku Klux Klan; France, and how Negro soldiers fared while there; Frenchwomen; Jack Johnson; the entire northern part of the United States; the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln; U. S. Grant; General Sherman; Catholics; the Pope; Jews; the Republican party; slavery; social equality; Communism; Socialism; the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution; or any topic calling for positive knowledge or manly self-assertion on the part of the Negro. The most accepted topics were sex and religion. I did not look at the man or answer. With one sentence he had lifted out of the silent dark the race question and I stood on the edge of a precipice.

  “Don’t be afraid of me,” he went on. “I just want to ask you one question.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said in a waiting, neutral tone.

  “Tell me, boy, are you hungry?” he asked seriously.

  I stared at him. He had spoken one word that touched the very soul of me, but I could not talk to him, could not let him know that I was starving myself to save money to go north. I did not trust him. But my face did not change its expression.

  “Oh, no, sir,” I said, managing a smile.

  I was hungry and he knew it; but he was a white man and I felt that if I told him I was hungry I would have been revealing something shameful.

  “Boy, I can see hunger in your face and eyes,” he said.

  “I get enough to eat,” I lied.

  “Then why do you keep so thin?” he asked me.

  “Well, I suppose I’m just that way, naturally,” I lied.

  “You’re just scared, boy,” he said.

  “Oh, no, sir,” I lied again.

  I could not look at him. I wanted to leave the counter, yet he was a white man and I had learned not to walk abruptly away from a white man when he was talking to me. I stood, my eyes looking away. He ran his hand into his pocket and pulled out a dollar bill.

  “Here, take this dollar and buy yourself some food,” he said.

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “Don’t be a fool,” he said. “You’re ashamed to take it. God, boy, don’t let a thing like that stop you from taking a dollar and eating.”

  The more he talked the more it became impossible for me to take the dollar. I wanted it, but I could not look at it. I wanted to speak, but I could not move my tongue. I wanted him to leave me alone. He frightened me.

  “Say something,” he said.

  All about us in the store were piles of goods; white men and women went from counter to counter. It was summer and from a high ceiling was suspended a huge electric fan that whirred. I stood waiting for the white man to give me the signal that would let me go.

  “I don’t understand it,” he said through his teeth. “How far did you go in school?”

  “Through the ninth grade, but it was really the eighth,” I told him. “You see, our studies in the ninth grade were more or less a review of what we had in the eighth grade.”

  Silence. He had not asked me for this long explanation, but I had spoken at length to fill up the yawning, shameful gap that loomed between us; I had spoken to try to drag the unreal nature of the conversation back to safe and sound souther
n ground. Of course, the conversation was real; it dealt with my welfare, but it had brought to the surface of day all the dark fears I had known all my life. The Yankee white man did not know how dangerous his words were.

  (There are some elusive, profound, recondite things that men find hard to say to other men; but with the Negro it is the little things of life that become hard to say, for these tiny items shape his destiny. A man will seek to express his relation to the stars; but when a man’s consciousness has been riveted upon obtaining a loaf of bread, that loaf of bread is as important as the stars.)

  Another white man walked up to the counter and I sighed with relief.

  “Do you want the dollar?” the man asked.

  “No, sir,” I whispered.

  “All right,” he said. “Just forget it.”

  He signed the account book and took the eyeglasses. I stuffed the book into my bag and turned from the counter and walked down the aisle, feeling a physical tingling along my spine, knowing that the white man knew I was really hungry. I avoided him after that. Whenever I saw him I felt in a queer way that he was my enemy, for he knew how I felt and the safety of my life in the South depended upon how well I concealed from all whites what I felt.

  One summer morning I stood at a sink in the rear of the factory washing a pair of eyeglasses that had just come from the polishing machines whose throbbing shook the floor upon which I stood. At each machine a white man was bent forward, working intently. To my left sunshine poured through a window, lighting up the rouge smears and making the factory look garish, violent, dangerous. It was nearing noon and my mind was drifting toward my daily lunch of a hamburger and a bag of peanuts. It had been a routine day, a day more or less like the other days I had spent on the job as errand boy and washer of eyeglasses. I was at peace with the world, that is, at peace in the only way in which a black boy in the South can be at peace with a world of white men.

  Perhaps it was the mere sameness of the day that soon made it different from the other days; maybe the white men who operated the machines felt bored with their dull, automatic tasks and hankered for some kind of excitement. Anyway, I presently heard footsteps behind me and turned my head. At my elbow stood a young white man, Mr. Olin, the immediate foreman under whom I worked. He was smiling and observing me as I cleaned emery dust from the eyeglasses.

  “Boy, how’s it going?” he asked.

  “Oh, fine, sir!” I answered with false heartiness, falling quickly into that nigger-being-a-good-natured-boy-in-the-presence-of-a-white-man pattern, a pattern into which I could now slide easily; although I was wondering if he had any criticism to make of my work.

  He continued to hover wordlessly at my side. What did he want? It was unusual for him to stand there and watch me; I wanted to look at him, but was afraid to.

  “Say, Richard, do you believe that I’m your friend?” he asked me.

  The question was so loaded with danger that I could not reply at once. I scarcely knew Mr. Olin. My relationship to him had been the typical relationship of Negroes to southern whites. He gave me orders and I said, “Yes, sir,” and obeyed them. Now, without warning, he was asking me if I thought that he was my friend; and I knew that all southern white men fancied themselves as friends of niggers. While fishing for an answer that would say nothing, I smiled.

  “I mean,” he persisted, “do you think I’m your friend?”

  “Well,” I answered, skirting the vast racial chasm between us, “I hope you are.”

  “I am,” he said emphatically.

  I continued to work, wondering what motives were prompting him. Already apprehension was rising in me.

  “I want to tell you something,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “We don’t want you to get hurt,” he explained. “We like you round here. You act like a good boy.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “You don’t deserve to get into trouble,” he went on.

  “Have I done something that somebody doesn’t like?” I asked, my mind frantically sweeping over all my past actions, weighing them in the light of the way southern white men thought Negroes should act.

  “Well, I don’t know,” he said and paused, letting his words sink meaningfully into my mind. He lit a cigarette. “Do you know Harrison?”

  He was referring to a Negro boy of about my own age who worked across the street for a rival optical house. Harrison and I knew each other casually, but there had never been the slightest trouble between us.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “I know him.”

  “Well, be careful,” Mr. Olin said. “He’s after you.”

  “After me? For what?”

  “He’s got a terrific grudge against you,” the white man explained. “What have you done to him?”

  The eyeglasses I was washing were forgotten. My eyes were upon Mr. Olin’s face, trying to make out what he meant. Was this something serious? I did not trust the white man, and neither did I trust Harrison. Negroes who worked on jobs in the South were usually loyal to their white bosses; they felt that that was the best way to ensure their jobs. Had Harrison felt that I had in some way jeopardized his job? Who was my friend: the white man or the black boy?

  “I haven’t done anything to Harrison,” I said.

  “Well, you better watch that nigger Harrison,” Mr. Olin said in a low, confidential tone. “A little while ago I went down to get a Coca-Cola and Harrison was waiting for you at the door of the building with a knife. He asked me when you were coming down. Said he was going to get you. Said you called him a dirty name. Now, we don’t want any fighting or bloodshed on the job.”

  I still doubted the white man, yet thought that perhaps Harrison had really interpreted something I had said as an insult.

  “I’ve got to see that boy and talk to him,” I said, thinking out loud.

  “No, you’d better not,” Mr. Olin said. “You’d better let some of us white boys talk to him.”

  “But how did this start?” I asked, still doubting but half believing.

  “He just told me that he was going to get even with you, going to cut you and teach you a lesson,” he said. “But don’t you worry. Let me handle this.”

  He patted my shoulder and went back to his machine. He was an important man in the factory and I had always respected his word. He had the authority to order me to do this or that. Now, why would he joke with me? White men did not often joke with Negroes, therefore what he had said was serious. I was upset. We black boys worked long hard hours for what few pennies we earned and we were edgy and tense. Perhaps that crazy Harrison was really after me. My appetite was gone. I had to settle this thing. A white man had walked into my delicately balanced world and had tipped it and I had to right it before I could feel safe. Yes, I would go directly to Harrison and ask what was the matter, what I had said that he resented. Harrison was black and so was I; I would ignore the warning of the white man and talk face to face with a boy of my own color.

  At noon I went across the street and found Harrison sitting on a box in the basement. He was eating lunch and reading a pulp magazine. As I approached him, he ran his hand into his pocket and looked at me with cold, watchful eyes.

  “Say, Harrison, what’s this all about?” I asked, standing cautiously four feet from him.

  He looked at me a long time and did not answer.

  “I haven’t done anything to you,” I said.

  “And I ain’t got nothing against you,” he mumbled, still watchful. “I don’t bother nobody.”

  “But Mr. Olin said that you came over to the factory this morning, looking for me with a knife.”

  “Aw, naw,” he said, more at ease now. “I ain’t been in your factory all day.” He had not looked at me as he spoke.

  “Then what did Mr. Olin mean?” I asked. “I’m not angry with you.”

  “Shucks, I thought you was looking for me to cut me,” Harrison explained. “Mr. Olin, he came over here this morning and sai
d you was going to kill me with a knife the moment you saw me. He said you was mad at me because I had insulted you. But I ain’t said nothing about you.” He still had not looked at me. He rose.

  “And I haven’t said anything about you,” I said.

  Finally he looked at me and I felt better. We two black boys, each working for ten dollars a week, stood staring at each other, thinking, comparing the motives of the absent white man, each asking himself if he could believe the other.

  “But why would Mr. Olin tell me things like that?” I asked.

  Harrison dropped his head; he laid his sandwich aside.

  “I…I…” he stammered and pulled from his pocket a long, gleaming knife; it was already open. “I was just waiting to see what you was gonna do to me…”

  I leaned weakly against a wall, feeling sick, my eyes upon the sharp steel blade of the knife.

  “You were going to cut me?” I asked.

  “If you had cut me, I was gonna cut you first,” he said. “I ain’t taking no chances.”

  “Are you angry with me about something?” I asked.

  “Man, I ain’t mad at nobody,” Harrison said uneasily.

  I felt how close I had come to being slashed. Had I come suddenly upon Harrison, he would have thought I was trying to kill him and he would have stabbed me, perhaps killed me. And what did it matter if one nigger killed another?

  “Look here,” I said. “Don’t believe what Mr. Olin says.”

  “I see now,” Harrison said. “He’s playing a dirty trick on us.”

  “He’s trying to make us kill each other for nothing.”

  “How come he wanna do that?” Harrison asked.

  I shook my head. Harrison sat, but still played with the open knife. I began to doubt. Was he really angry with me? Was he waiting until I turned my back to stab me? I was in torture.

  “I suppose it’s fun for white men to see niggers fight,” I said, forcing a laugh.

  “But you might’ve killed me,” Harrison said.

  “To white men we’re like dogs or cocks,” I said.

  “I don’t want to cut you,” Harrison said.