Native Son (4 page)

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 poolroom 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?”

“Nothing. Seen G.H. or Jack yet?”

“Naw. You?”

“Naw. Say, got a cigarette?”

“Yeah.”

Bigger took out his pack and gave Gus a cigarette; he lit his and held the match for Gus. They leaned their backs against the red-brick wall of a building, smoking, their cigarettes slanting white across their black chins. To the east Bigger saw the sun burning a dazzling yellow. In the sky above him a few big white clouds drifted. He puffed silently, relaxed, his mind pleasantly vacant of purpose. Every slight movement in the street evoked a casual curiosity in him. Automatically, his eyes followed each car as it whirred over the smooth black asphalt. A woman came by and he watched the gentle sway of her body until she disappeared into a doorway. He sighed, scratched his chin and mumbled,

“Kinda warm today.”

“Yeah,” Gus said.

“You get more heat from this sun than from them old radiators at home.”

“Yeah; them old white landlords sure don’t give much heat.”

“And they always knocking at your door for money.”

“I’ll be glad when summer comes.”

“Me too,” Bigger said.

He stretched his arms above his head and yawned; his eyes moistened. The sharp precision of the world of steel and stone dissolved into blurred waves. He blinked and the world grew hard again, mechanical, distinct. A weaving motion in the sky made him turn his eyes upward; he saw a slender streak of billowing white blooming against the deep blue. A plane was writing high up in the air.

“Look!” Bigger said.

“What?”

“That plane writing up there,” Bigger said, pointing.

“Oh!”

They squinted at a tiny ribbon of unfolding vapor that spelled out the word: USE…. The plane was so far away that at times the strong glare of the sun blanked it from sight.

“You can hardly see it,” Gus said.

“Looks like a little bird,” Bigger breathed with childlike wonder.

“Them white boys sure can fly,” Gus said.

“Yeah,” Bigger said, wistfully. “They get a chance to do everything.”

Noiselessly, the tiny plane looped and veered, vanishing and appearing, leaving behind it a long trail of white plumage, like coils of fluffy paste being squeezed from a tube; a plume-coil that grew and swelled and slowly began to fade into the air at the edges. The plane wrote another word: SPEED….

“How high you reckon he is?” Bigger asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe a hundred miles; maybe a thousand.”

“I could fly one of them things if I had a chance,” Bigger mumbled reflectively, as though talking to himself.

Gus pulled down the corners of his lips, stepped out from the
wall, squared his shoulders, doffed his cap, bowed low and spoke with mock deference:

“Yessuh.”

“You go to hell,” Bigger said, smiling.

“Yessuh,” Gus said again.

“I
could
fly a plane if I had a chance,” Bigger said.

“If you wasn’t black and if you had some money and if they’d let you go to that aviation school, you
could
fly a plane,” Gus said.

For a moment Bigger contemplated all the “its” that Gus had mentioned. Then both boys broke into hard laughter, looking at each other through squinted eyes. When their laughter subsided, Bigger said in a voice that was half-question and half-statement:

“It’s funny how the white folks treat us, ain’t it?”

“It better be funny,” Gus said.

“Maybe they right in not wanting us to fly,” Bigger said. “’Cause if I took a plane up I’d take a couple of bombs along and drop ’em as sure as hell….”

They laughed again, still looking upward. The plane sailed and dipped and spread another word against the sky: GASOLINE….

“Use Speed Gasoline,” Bigger mused, rolling the words slowly from his lips. “God, I’d like to fly up there in that sky.”

“God’ll let you fly when He gives you your wings up in heaven,” Gus said.

They laughed again, reclining against the wall, smoking, the lids of their eyes drooped softly against the sun. Cars whizzed past on rubber tires. Bigger’s face was metallically black in the strong sunlight. There was in his eyes a pensive, brooding amusement, as of a man who had been long confronted and tantalized by a riddle whose answer seemed always just on the verge of escaping him, but prodding him irresistibly on to seek its solution. The silence irked Bigger; he was anxious to do something to evade looking so squarely at this problem.

“Let’s play ‘white,’ ” Bigger said, referring to a game of play-acting in which he and his friends imitated the ways and manners of white folks.

“I don’t feel like it,” Gus said.

“General!” Bigger pronounced in a sonorous tone, looking at Gus expectantly.

“Aw, hell! I don’t want to play,” Gus whined.

“You’ll be court-martialed,” Bigger said, snapping out his words with military precision.

“Nigger, you nuts!” Gus laughed.

“General!” Bigger tried again, determinedly.

Gus looked wearily at Bigger, then straightened, saluted and answered:

“Yessuh.”

“Send your men over the river at dawn and attack the enemy’s left flank,” Bigger ordered.

“Yessuh.”

“Send the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Regiments,” Bigger said, frowning. “And attack with tanks, gas, planes, and infantry.”

“Yessuh!” Gus said again, saluting and clicking his heels.

For a moment they were silent, facing each other, their shoulders thrown back, their lips compressed to hold down the mounting impulse to laugh. Then they guffawed, partly at themselves and partly at the vast white world that sprawled and towered in the sun before them.