Native Son (45 page)

“I don’t know, Mr. Max.”

“Bigger, I know my face is white,” Max said. “And I know that almost every white face you’ve met in your life had it in for you, even when that white face didn’t know it. Every white man considers it his duty to make a black man keep his distance. He doesn’t know why most of the time, but he acts that way. It’s the way things are, Bigger. But I want you to know that you can trust me.”

“It ain’t no use, Mr. Max.”

“You want me to handle your case?”

“You can’t help me none. They got me.”

Bigger knew that Max was trying to make him feel that he accepted the way he looked at things and it made him as self-conscious as when Jan had taken his hand and shaken it that night
in the car. It made him live again in that hard and sharp consciousness of his color and feel the shame and fear that went with it, and at the same time it made him hate himself for feeling it. He trusted Max. Was Max not taking upon himself a thing that would make other whites hate him? But he doubted if Max could make him see things in a way that would enable him to go to his death. He doubted that God Himself could give him a picture for that now. As he felt at present, they would have to drag him to the chair, as they had dragged him down the steps the night they captured him. He did not want his feelings tampered with; he feared that he might walk into another trap. If he expressed belief in Max, if he acted on that belief, would it not end just as all other commitments of faith had ended? He wanted to believe; but was afraid. He felt that he should have been able to meet Max halfway; but, as always, when a white man talked to him, he was caught out in No Man’s Land. He sat slumped in his chair with his head down and he looked at Max only when Max’s eyes were not watching him.

“Here; take a cigarette, Bigger.” Max lit Bigger’s and then lit his own; they smoked awhile. “Bigger, I’m your lawyer. I want to talk to you honestly. What you say is in strictest confidence….”

Bigger stared at Max. He felt sorry for the white man. He saw that Max was afraid that he would not talk at all. And he had no desire to hurt Max. Max leaned forward determinedly. Well, tell him. Talk. Get it over with and let Max go.

“Aw, I don’t care what I say or do now….”

“Oh, yes, you
do
!” Max said quickly.

In a fleeting second an impulse to laugh rose up in Bigger, and left. Max was anxious to help him and he had to die.

“Maybe I do care,” Bigger drawled.

“If you don’t care about what you say or do, then why didn’t you re-enact that crime out at the Dalton home today?”

“I wouldn’t do nothing for
them
.”

“Why?”

“They hate black folks,” he said.

“
Why
, Bigger?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Max.”

“Bigger, don’t you know they hate others, too?”

“Who they hate?”

“They hate trade unions. They hate folks who try to organize. They hate Jan.”

“But they hate black folks more than they hate unions,” Bigger said. “They don’t treat union folks like they do me.”

“Oh, yes, they do. You think that because your color makes it easy for them to point you out, segregate you, exploit you. But they do that to others, too. They hate me because I’m trying to help you. They’re writing me letters, calling me a ‘dirty Jew.’ ”

“All I know is that they hate me,” Bigger said grimly.

“Bigger, the State’s Attorney gave me a copy of your confession. Now, tell me, did you tell him the truth?”

“Yeah. There wasn’t nothing else to do.”

“Now, tell me this, Bigger. Why did you do it?”

Bigger sighed, shrugged his shoulders and sucked his lungs full of smoke.

“I don’t know,” he said; smoke eddied slowly from his nostrils.

“Did you plan it?”

“Naw.”

“Did anybody help you?”

“Naw.”

“Had you been thinking about doing something like that for a long time?”

“Naw.”

“How did it happen?”

“It just happened, Mr. Max.”

“Are you sorry?”

“What’s the use of being sorry? That won’t help me none.”

“You can’t think of any reason why you did it?”

Bigger was staring straight before him, his eyes wide and shining. His talking to Max had evoked again in him that urge to talk, to tell, to try to make his feelings known. A wave of excitement flooded him. He felt that he ought to be able to reach out with his bare hands and carve from naked space the concrete, solid reasons why he had murdered. He felt them that strongly. If he could do
that, he would relax; he would sit and wait until they told him to walk to the chair; and he would walk.

“Mr. Max, I don’t know. I was all mixed up. I was feeling so many things at once.”

“Did you rape her, Bigger?”

“Naw, Mr. Max. I didn’t. But nobody’ll believe me.”

“Had you planned to before Mrs. Dalton came into the room?”

Bigger shook his head and rubbed his hands nervously across his eyes. In a sense he had forgotten Max was in the room. He was trying to feel the texture of his own feelings, trying to tell what they meant.

“Oh, I don’t know. I was feeling a little that way. Yeah, I reckon I was. I was drunk and she was drunk and I was feeling that way.”

“But, did you rape her?”

“Naw. But everybody’ll say I did. What’s the use? I’m black. They say black men do that. So it don’t matter if I did or if I didn’t.”

“How long had you known her?”

“A few hours.”

“Did you like her?”

“
Like
her?”

Bigger’s voice boomed so suddenly from his throat that Max started. Bigger leaped to his feet; his eyes widened and his hands lifted midway to his face, trembling.

“No! No! Bigger….” Max said.

“
Like
her? I
hated
her! So help me God, I hated her!” he shouted.

“Sit down, Bigger!”

“I hate her now, even though she’s dead! God knows, I hate her right now….”

Max grabbed him and pushed him back into the chair.

“Don’t get excited, Bigger. Here; take it easy!”

Bigger quieted, but his eyes roved the room. Finally, he lowered his head and knotted his fingers. His lips were slightly parted.

“You say you hated her?”

“Yeah; and I ain’t sorry she’s dead.”

“But what had she done to you? You say you had just met her.”

“I don’t know. She didn’t do nothing to me.” He paused and ran his hand nervously across his forehead. “She…. It was… Hell, I don’t know. She asked me a lot of questions. She acted and talked in a way that made me hate her. She made me feel like a dog I was so mad I wanted to cry….” His voice trailed off in a plaintive whimper. He licked his lips. He was caught in a net of vague, associative memory: he saw an image of his little sister, Vera, sitting on the edge of a chair crying because he had shamed her by “looking” at her; he saw her rise and fling her shoe at him. He shook his head, confused. “Aw, Mr. Max, she wanted me to tell her how Negroes live. She got into the front seat of the car where I was….”

“But, Bigger, you don’t hate people for that. She was being kind to you….”

“Kind, hell! She wasn’t kind to me!”

“What do you mean? She accepted you as another human being.”

“Mr. Max, we’re all split up. What you say is kind ain’t kind at all. I didn’t know nothing about that woman. All I knew was that they kill us for women like her. We live apart. And then she comes and acts like that to me.”

“Bigger, you should have tried to understand. She was acting toward you only as she knew how.”

Bigger glared about the small room, searching for an answer. He knew that his actions did not seem logical and he gave up trying to explain them logically. He reverted to his feelings as a guide in answering Max.

“Well, I acted toward her only as I know how. She was rich. She and her kind own the earth. She and her kind say black folks are dogs. They don’t let you do nothing but what they want….”

“But, Bigger,
this
woman was trying to help you!”

“She didn’t act like it.”

“How
should
she have acted?”

“Aw, I don’t know, Mr. Max. White folks and black folks is strangers. We don’t know what each other is thinking. Maybe she was trying to be kind; but she didn’t act like it. To me she looked and acted like all other white folks….”

“But she’s not to be blamed for that, Bigger.”

“She’s the same color as the rest of ’em,” he said defensively.

“I don’t understand, Bigger. You say you hated her and yet you say you felt like having her when you were in the room and she was drunk and you were drunk….”

“Yeah,” Bigger said, wagging his head and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah; that’s funny, ain’t it?” He sucked at his cigarette. “Yeah; I reckon it was because I knew I oughtn’t’ve wanted to. I reckon it was because they say we black men do that anyhow. Mr. Max, you know what some white men say we black men do? They say we rape white women when we got the clap and they say we do that because we believe that if we rape white women then we’ll get rid of the clap. That’s what some white men
say
. They
believe
that. Jesus, Mr. Max, when folks says things like that about you, you whipped before you born. What’s the use? Yeah; I reckon I was feeling that way when I was in the room with her. They say we do things like that and they say it to kill us. They draw a line and say for you to stay on your side of the line. They don’t care if there’s no bread over on your side. They don’t care if you die. And then they say things like that about you and when you try to come from behind your line they kill you. They feel they ought to kill you then. Everybody wants to kill you then. Yeah; I reckon I was feeling that way and maybe the reason was because they say it. Maybe that was the reason.”

“You mean you wanted to defy them? You wanted to show them that you dared, that you didn’t care?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Max. But what I got to care about? I knew that some time or other they was going to get me for something. I’m black. I don’t have to do nothing for ’em to get me. The first white finger they point at me, I’m a goner, see?”

“But, Bigger, when Mrs. Dalton came into that room, why didn’t you stop right there and tell her what was wrong? You wouldn’t’ve been in all this trouble then….”

“Mr. Max, so help me God, I couldn’t do nothing when I turned around and saw that woman coming to that bed. Honest to God, I didn’t know what I was doing….”

“You mean you went blank?”

“Naw; naw…. I knew what I was doing, all right. But I couldn’t help it. That’s what I mean. It was like another man stepped inside of my skin and started acting for me….”

“Bigger, tell me, did you feel more attraction for Mary than for the women of your own race?”

“Naw. But they say that. It ain’t true. I hated her then and I hate her now.”

“But why did you kill Bessie?”

“To keep her from talking. Mr. Max, after killing that white woman, it wasn’t hard to kill somebody else. I didn’t have to think much about killing Bessie. I knew I had to kill her and I did. I had to get away….”

“Did you hate Bessie?”

“Naw.”

“Did you love her?”

“Naw. I was just scared. I wasn’t in love with Bessie. She was just my girl. I don’t reckon I was ever in love with nobody. I killed Bessie to save myself. You have to have a girl, so I had Bessie. And I killed her.”

“Bigger, tell me, when did you start hating Mary?”

“I hated her as soon as she spoke to me, as soon as I saw her, I reckon I hated her before I saw her….”

“But,
why
?”

“I told you. What her kind ever let us do?”

“What, exactly, Bigger, did you want to do?”

Bigger sighed and sucked at his cigarette.

“Nothing, I reckon. Nothing. But I reckon I wanted to do what other people do.”

“And because you couldn’t, you hated her?”

Again Bigger felt that his actions were not logical, and again he fell back upon his feelings for a guide in answering Max’s questions.

“Mr. Max, a guy gets tired of being told what he can do and
can’t do. You get a little job here and a little job there. You shine shoes, sweep streets; anything…. You don’t make enough to live on. You don’t know when you going to get fired. Pretty soon you get so you can’t hope for nothing. You just keep moving all the time, doing what other folks say. You ain’t a man no more. You just work day in and day out so the world can roll on and other people can live. You know, Mr. Max, I always think of white folks….”

He paused. Max leaned forward and touched him.

“Go on, Bigger.”

“Well, they own everything. They choke you off the face of the earth. They like God….” He swallowed, closed his eyes and sighed. “They don’t even let you feel what you want to feel. They after you so hot and hard you can only feel what they doing to you. They kill you before you die.”

“But, Bigger, I asked you what it was that you wanted to do so badly that you had to hate them?”

“Nothing. I reckon I didn’t want to do nothing.”

“But you said that people like Mary and her kind never let you do anything.”

“Why should I want to do anything? I ain’t got a chance. I don’t know nothing. I’m just black and they make the laws.”

“What would you like to have been?”

Bigger was silent for a long time. Then he laughed without sound, without moving his lips; it was three short expulsions of breath forced upward through his nostrils by the heaving of his chest.

“I wanted to be an aviator once. But they wouldn’t let me go to the school where I was suppose’ to learn it. They built a big school and then drew a line around it and said that nobody could go to it but those who lived within the line. That kept all the colored boys out.”

“And what else?”

“Well, I wanted to be in the army once.”

“Why didn’t you join?”

“Hell, it’s a Jim Crow army. All they want a black man for is to dig ditches. And in the navy, all I can do is wash dishes and scrub floors.”

“And was there anything else you wanted to do?”

“Oh, I don’t know. What’s the use now? I’m through, washed up. They got me. I’ll die.”