Native Son Part 15

"Come on in the kitchen and dress, Vera," the mother said.

"He makes me feel like a dog," Vera sobbed with her face buried in her hands, going behind the curtain.

"Boy," said Buddy, "I tried to keep awake till you got in last night, but I couldn't. I had to go to bed at three. I was so sleepy I could hardly keep my eyes open."

"I was here before then," Bigger said.

"Aw, naw! I was up...."

"I know when I got in!" know when I got in!"

They looked at each other in silence.

"O.K.," Buddy said.

Bigger was uneasy. He felt that he was not handling himself right.

"You get the job?" Buddy asked.

"Yeah."

"Driving?"

"Yeah."

"What kind of a car is it?"

"A Buick."

"Can I ride with you some time?"

"Sure; soon as I get settled."

Buddy's questions made him feel a little more at ease; he always liked the adoration Buddy showed him.

"Gee! That's the kind of job I want," Buddy said.

"It's easy."

"Will you see if you can find me one?"

"Sure. Give me time."

"Got a cigarette?"

"Yeah."

They were silent, smoking. Bigger was thinking of the furnace. Had Mary burned? He looked at his watch; it was seven o'clock. Ought he go over right now, without waiting for breakfast? Maybe he had left something lying round that would let them know Mary was dead. But if they slept late on Sunday mornings, as Mr. Dalton had said, they would have no reason to be looking round down there.

"Bessie was by last night," Buddy said.

"Yeah?"

"She said she saw you in Ernie's Kitchen Shack with some white folks."

"Yeah. I was driving 'em last night."

"She was talking about you and her getting married."

"Humph!"

"How come gals that way, Bigger? Soon's a guy get a good job, they want to marry?"

"d.a.m.n if I know."

"You got a good job now. You can get a better gal than Bessie," Buddy said.

Although he agreed with Buddy, he said nothing.

"I'm going to tell Bessie!" Vera called.

"If you do, I'll break your neck," Bigger said.

"Hush that kind of talk in here," the mother said.

"Oh, yeah," Buddy said. "I met Jack last night. He said you almost murdered old Gus."

"I ain't having nothing to do with that gang no more," Bigger said emphatically.

"But Jack's all right," Buddy said.

"Well, Jack, but none of the rest."

Gus and G.H. and Jack seemed far away to Bigger now, in another life, and all because he had been in Dalton's home for a few hours and had killed a white girl. He looked round the room, seeing it for the first time. There was no rug on the floor and the plastering on the walls and ceiling hung loose in many places. There were two worn iron beds, four chairs, an old dresser, and a drop-leaf table on which they ate. This was much different from Dalton's home. Here all slept in one room; there he would have a room for himself alone. He smelt food cooking and remembered that one could not smell food cooking in Dalton's home; pots could not be heard rattling all over the house. Each person lived in one room and had a little world of his own. He hated this room and all the people in it, including himself. Why did he and his folks have to live like this? What had they ever done? Perhaps they had not done anything. Maybe they had to live this way precisely because none of them in all their lives had ever done anything, right or wrong, that mattered much.

"Fix the table, Vera. Breakfast's ready," the mother called.

"Yessum."

Bigger sat at the table and waited for food. Maybe this would be the last time he would eat here. He felt it keenly and it helped him to have patience. Maybe some day he would be eating in jail. Here he was sitting with them and they did not know that he had murdered a white girl and cut her head off and burnt her body. The thought of what he had done, the awful horror of it, the daring a.s.sociated with such actions, formed for him for the first time in his fear-ridden life a barrier of protection between him and a world he feared. He had murdered and had created a new life for himself. It was something that was all his own, and it was the first time in his life he had had anything that others could not take from him. Yes; he could sit here calmly and eat and not be concerned about what his family thought or did. He had a natural wall from behind which he could look at them. His crime was an anchor weighing him safely in time; it added to him a certain confidence which his gun and knife did not. He was outside of his family now, over and beyond them; they were incapable of even thinking that he had done such a deed. And he had done something which even he had not thought possible.

Though he had killed by accident, not once did he feel the need to tell himself that it had been an accident. He was black and he had been alone in a room where a white girl had been killed, therefore he had killed her. That was what everybody would say anyhow, no matter what he said. And in a certain sense he knew that the girl's death had not been accidental. He had killed many times before, only on those other times there had been no handy victim or circ.u.mstance to make visible or dramatic his will to kill His crime seemed natural; he felt that all of his life had been leading; to something like this. It was no longer a matter of dumb wonder as to what would happen to him and his black skin; he knew now The hidden meaning of his life-a meaning which others did not see and which he had always tried to hide-had spilled out. No; it was no accident, and he would never say that it was. There was in him a kind of terrified pride in feeling and thinking that some day he would be able to say publicly that he had done it. It was as though he had an obscure but deep debt to fulfil to himself in accepting the deed.

Now that the ice was broken, could he not do other things? What was there to stop him? While sitting there at the table waiting for his breakfast, he felt that he was arriving at something which had long eluded him. Things were becoming clear; he would know how to act from now on. The thing to do was to act just like others acted, live like they lived, and while they were not looking, do what you wanted. They would never know. He felt in the quiet presence of his mother, brother, and sister a force, inarticulate and unconscious, making for living without thinking, making for peace and habit, making for a hope that blinded. He felt that they wanted and yearned to see life in a certain way; they needed a certain picture of the world; there was one way of living they preferred above all others; and they were blind to what did not fit. They did not want to see what others were doing if that doing did not feed their own desires. All one had to do was be bold, do something n.o.body thought of. The whole thing came to him in the form of a powerful and simple feeling; there was in everyone a great hunger to believe that made him blind, and if he could see while others were blind, then he could get what he wanted and never be caught at it. Now, who on earth would think that he, a black timid Negro boy, would murder and burn a rich white girl and would sit and wait for his breakfast like this? Elation filled him.

He sat at the table watching the snow fall past the window and many things became plain. No, he did not have to hide behind a wall or a curtain now; he had a safer way of being safe, an easier way. What he had done last night had proved that. Jan was blind. Mary had been blind. Mr. Dalton was blind. And Mrs. Dalton was blind; yes, blind in more ways than one. Bigger smiled slightly. Mrs. Dalton had not known that Mary was dead while she had stood over the bed in that room last night. She had thought that Mary was drunk, because she was used to Mary's coming home drunk. And Mrs. Dalton had not known that he was in the room with her; it would have been the last thing she would have thought of. He was black and would not have figured in her thoughts on such an occasion. Bigger felt that a lot of people were like Mrs. Dalton, blind....

"Here you are, Bigger," his mother said, setting a plate of grits on the table.

He began to eat, feeling much better after thinking out what had happened to him last night. He felt he could control himself now.

"Ain't you-all eating?" he asked, looking round.

"You go on and eat. You got to go. We'll eat later," his mother said.

He did not need any money, for he had the money he had gotten from Mary's purse; but he wanted to cover his tracks carefully.

"You got any money, Ma?"

"Just a little, Bigger."

"I need some."

"Here's a half. That leaves me exactly one dollar to last till Wednesday."

He put the half-dollar in his pocket. Buddy had finished dressing and was sitting on the edge of the bed. Suddenly, he saw Buddy, saw him in the light of Jan. Buddy was soft and vague; his eyes were defenseless and their glance went only to the surface of things. It was strange that he had not noticed that before. Buddy, too, was blind. Buddy was sitting there longing for a job like his. Buddy, too, went round and round in a groove and did not see things. Buddy's clothes hung loosely compared with the way Jan's hung. Buddy seemed aimless, lost, with no sharp or hard edges, like a chubby puppy. Looking at Buddy and thinking of Jan and Mr. Dalton, he saw in Buddy a certain stillness, an isolation, meaninglessness.

"How come you looking at me that way, Bigger?"

"Hunh?"

"You looking at me so funny."

"I didn't know it. I was thinking."

"What?"

"Nothing."

His mother came into the room with more plates of food and he saw how soft and shapeless she was. Her eyes were tired and sunken and darkly ringed from a long lack of rest. She moved about slowly, touching objects with her fingers as she pa.s.sed them, using them for support. Her feet dragged over the wooden floor and her face held an expression of tense effort. Whenever she wanted to look at anything, even though it was near her, she turned her entire head and body to see it and did not shift her eyes. There was in her heart, it seemed, a heavy and delicately balanced burden whose weight she did not want to a.s.sume by disturbing it one whit. She saw him looking at her.

"Eat your breakfast, Bigger."

"I'm eating."

Vera brought her plate and sat opposite him. Bigger felt that even though her face was smaller and smoother than his mother's, the beginning of the same tiredness was already there. How different Vera was from Mary! He could see it in the very way Vera moved her hand when she carried the fork to her mouth; she seemed to be shrinking from life in every gesture she made. The very manner in which she sat showed a fear so deep as to be an organic part of her; she carried the food to her mouth in tiny bits, as if dreading its choking her, or fearing that it would give out too quickly.

"Bigger!" Vera wailed.

"Hunh?"

"You stop now," Vera said, laying aside her fork and slapping her hand through the air at him.

"What?"

"Stop looking at me, Bigger!"

"Aw, shut up and eat your breakfast!"

"Ma, make 'im stop looking at me!"

"I ain't looking at her, Ma!"

"You is is!" Vera said.

"Eat your breakfast, Vera, and hush," said the mother.

"He just keeps watching me, Ma!"

"Gal, you crazy!" said Bigger.

"I ain't no crazy'n you!"

"Now, both both of you hush," said the mother. of you hush," said the mother.

"I ain't going to eat with him watching me," Vera said, getting up and sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Go on and eat your grub!" Bigger said, leaping to his feet and grabbing his cap. "I'm getting out of here."

"What's wrong with you, Vera?" Buddy asked.

"'Tend to your business!" Vera said, tears welling to her eyes.

"Will you children please please hush," the mother wailed. hush," the mother wailed.

"Ma, you oughtn't let 'im treat me that way," Vera said.

Bigger picked up his suitcase. Vera came back to the table, drying her eyes.

"When will I see you again, Bigger?" the mother asked.

"I don't know," he said, slamming the door.

He was halfway down the steps when he heard his name called.

"Say, Bigger!"

He stopped and looked back. Buddy was running down the steps. He waited, wondering what was wrong.

"What you want?"

Buddy stood before him, diffident, smiling.

"I-I...."

"What's the matter?"

"Shucks, I just thought...."