Native Son (34 page)

He heard a street car passing in the street; they were running again. A wild thought surged through him. Suppose the police had already searched this neighborhood and had overlooked him? But sober judgment told him that that was impossible. He patted his pocket to make sure the gun was there, then climbed through the window. Cold wind smote his face. It must be below zero, he thought. At both ends of the alley the street lamps glowed through the murky air, refracted into mammoth balls of light. The sky was dark blue and far away. He walked to the end of the alley and turned onto the sidewalk, joining the passing stream of people. He waited for someone to challenge his right to walk there, but no one did.

At the end of the block he saw a crowd of people and fear clutched hard at his stomach. What were they doing? He slowed and saw that they were gathered about a newsstand. They were black people and they were buying papers to read about how the white folks were trying to track him to earth. He lowered his head and went forward and slipped into the crowd. The people were talking excitedly. Cautiously, he held out two cents in his cold fingers. When he was close enough, he saw the front page; his picture was in the center of it. He bent his head lower, hoping that no one would see him closely enough to see that it was he who was pictured there.

“
Times
,” he said.

He tucked the paper under his arm, edged out of the crowd
and walked southward, looking for an empty flat. At the next corner he saw a “For Rent” sign in a building which he knew was cut up into small kitchenette flats. This was what he wanted. He went to the door and read the sign; there was an empty flat on the fourth floor. He walked to the alley and began to mount the outside rear stairs, his feet softly crunching in snow. He heard a door open; he stopped, got his gun and waited, kneeling in the snow.

“Who’s that?”

It was a woman’s voice. Then a man’s voice sounded.

“What’s the matter, Ellen?”

“I thought I heard someone out here on the porch.”

“Ah, you’re simply nervous. You’re scared of all this stuff you’ve been reading in the papers.”

“But I’m sure I heard somebody.”

“Aw, empty the garbage and shut the door. It’s cold.”

Bigger flattened against the building, in the dark. He saw a woman come out of a door, pause, look round; she went to the far end of the porch and dumped something into a garbage pail and went back inside. I would’ve had to kill ’em both if she saw me, he thought. He tiptoed up to the fourth floor and found two windows, both of them dark. He tried to lift the screen in one of them and found it frozen. Gently, he shook it to and fro until it loosened; then he lifted it out and laid it on the porch in the snow. Inch by inch, he raised the window, breathing so loud that he thought surely people must hear him even in the streets. He climbed through into a dark room and struck a match. An electric light was on the other side of the room and he went to it and pulled the chain. He put his cap over the bulb so that no light would seep through to the outside, then opened the paper. Yes; here was a large picture of him. At the top of the picture ran a tall line of black type: 24-HOUR SEARCH FAILS TO UNEARTH RAPIST. In another column he saw: RAID 1,000 NEGRO HOMES. INCIPIENT RIOT QUELLED AT 47TH AND HALSTED. There was another map of the South Side. This time the shaded area had deepened from both the north and south, leaving a small square of white in the middle of the oblong Black Belt. He stood looking at
that tiny square of white as though gazing down into the barrel of a gun. He was there on that map, in that white spot, standing in a room waiting for them to come. Dead-set, his eyes stared above the top of the paper. There was nothing left for him but to shoot it out. He examined the map again; the police had come from the north as far south as Fortieth Street; and they had come from the south as far north as Fiftieth Street. That meant that he was somewhere in between, and they were minutes away. He read:

Bigger’s eyes went down the page, snatching at what he thought most important: “word spread that the slayer had been captured, but was immediately denied,” “before night police and vigilantes will have covered the entire Black Belt,” “raiding numerous Communist headquarters throughout the city,” “the arrest of hundreds of Reds failed, however, to uncover any clues,” “public warned by Mayor against ‘boring from within,’….” Then:

He lowered the paper; he could read no more. The one fact to remember was that eight thousand men, white men, with guns and gas, were out there in the night looking for him. According to this paper, they were but a few blocks away. Could he get to the roof of this building? If so, maybe he could crouch there until they passed. He thought of burying himself deep in the snow of the roof, but he knew that that was impossible. He pulled the chain again and
plunged the room in darkness. Using the flashlight, he went to the door and opened it and looked into the hall. It was empty and a dim light burned at the far end. He put out the flashlight and tiptoed, looking at the ceiling, searching for a trapdoor leading to the roof. Finally, he saw a pair of wooden steps leading upward. Suddenly, his muscles stiffened as though a wire strung through his body had jerked him. A siren shriek entered the hallway. And immediately he heard voices, excited, low, tense. From somewhere down below a man called,

“They’s comin’!”

There was nothing to do now but go up; he clutched the wooden steps above him and climbed, wanting to get out of sight before anyone came into the hall. He reached the trapdoor and pushed against it with his head; it opened. He grabbed something solid in the darkness above him and hoisted himself upward, hoping as he did so that it would hold him and not let him go crashing down upon the hall floor. He rested on his knees, his chest heaving. Then he eased the door shut, peering just in time to see a door in the hall opening. That was close! The siren sounded again; it was outside in the street. It seemed to sound a warning that no one could hide from it; that action to escape was futile; that soon the men with guns and gas would come and penetrate where the siren sound had penetrated.

He listened; there were throbs of motors; shouts rose from the streets; there were screams of women and curses of men. He heard footsteps on the stairs. The siren died and began again, on a high, shrill note this time. It made him want to clutch at his throat; as long as it sounded it seemed that he could not breathe. He had to get to the roof! He switched on the flashlight and crawled through a narrow loft till he came to an opening. He put his shoulder to it and heaved; it gave so suddenly and easily that he drew back in fear. He thought that someone had snatched it open from above and in the same instant of its opening he saw an expanse of gleaming white snow against the dark smudge of night and a stretch of luminous sky. A medley of crashing sounds came, louder than he had thought that sound could be: horns, sirens, screams. There was hunger in
those sounds as they crashed over the roof-tops and chimneys; but under it, low and distinct, he heard voices of fear: curses of men and cries of children.

Yes; they were looking for him in every building and on every floor and in every room. They wanted him. His eyes jerked upward as a huge, sharp beam of yellow light shot into the sky. Another came, crossing it like a knife. Then another. Soon the sky was full of them. They circled slowly, hemming him in; bars of light forming a prison, a wall between him and the rest of the world; bars weaving a shifting wall of light into which he dared not go. He was in the midst of it now; this was what he had been running from ever since that night Mrs. Dalton had come into the room and had charged him with such fear that his hands had gripped the pillow with fingers of steel and had cut off the air from Mary’s lungs.

Below him was a loud, heavy pounding, like a faraway rumble of thunder. He had to get to the roof; he struggled upward, then fell flat, in deep soft snow, his eyes riveted upon a white man across the street upon another roof. Bigger watched the man whirl the beam of a flashlight. Would the man look in his direction? Could the beam of a flashlight make him visible from where the man was? He watched the man walk round awhile and then disappear.

Quickly, he rose and shut the trapdoor. To leave it open would create suspicion. Then he fell flat again, listening. There was the sound of many running feet below him. It seemed that an army was thundering up the stairs. There was nowhere he could run to now; either they caught him or they did not. The thundering grew louder and he knew that the men were nearing the top floor. He lifted his eyes and looked in all directions, watching roofs to the left and right of him. He did not want to be surprised by someone creeping upon him from behind. He saw that the roof to his right was not joined to the one upon which he lay; that meant that no one could steal upon him from that direction. The one to his left was joined to the roof of the building upon which he lay, making it one long icy runway. He lifted his head and looked; there were other roofs joined, too. He could run over those roofs, over the snow and round those chimneys until he came to the building that
dropped to the ground. Then that would be all. Would he jump off and kill himself? He did not know. He had an almost mystic feeling that if he were ever cornered something in him would prompt him to act the right way, the right way being the way that would enable him to die without shame.

He heard a noise close by; he looked round just in time to see a white face, a head, then shoulders pull into view upon the roof to the right of him. A man stood up, cut sharply against the background of roving yellow lights. He watched the man twirl a pencil of light over the snow. Bigger raised his gun and trained it upon the man and waited; if the light reached him, he would shoot. What would he do afterwards? He did not know. But the yellow spot never reached him. He watched the man go down, feet first, then shoulders and head; he was gone.

He relaxed a bit; at least the roof to his right was safe now. He waited to hear sounds that would tell him that someone was climbing up through the trapdoor. The rumbling below him rose in volume with the passing seconds, but he could not tell if the men were coming closer or receding. He waited and held his gun. Above his head the sky stretched in a cold, dark-blue oval, cupping the city like an iron palm covered with silk. The wind blew, hard, icy, without ceasing. It seemed to him that he had already frozen, that pieces could be broken off him, as one chips bits from a cake of ice. In order to know that he still had the gun in his hand he had to look at it, for his hand no longer had any feeling.

Then he was stiff with fear. There were pounding feet right below him. They were on the top floor now. Ought he to run to the roof to his left? But he had seen no one search that roof; if he ran he might come face to face with someone coming up out of another trapdoor. He looked round, thinking that maybe someone was creeping up on him; but there was nobody. The sound of feet came louder. He put his ear to the naked ice and listened. Yes; they were walking about in the hallway; there were several of them directly under him, near the trapdoor. He looked again to the roof on his left, wanting to run to it and hide; but was afraid. Were they coming up? He listened; but there were so many voices he could
not make out the words. He did not want them to surprise him. Whatever happened, he wanted to go down looking into the faces of those that would kill him. Finally, under the terror-song of the siren, the voices came so close that he could hear words clearly.

“God, but I’m tired!”

“I’m cold!”

“I believe we’re just wasting time.”

“Say, Jerry! You going to the roof this time?”

“Yeah; I’ll go.”

“That nigger might be in New York by now.”

“Yeah. But we better look.”

“Say, did you see that brown gal in there?”

“The one that didn’t have much on?”

“Yeah.”

“Boy, she was a peach, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah; I wonder what on earth a nigger wants to kill a white woman for when he has such good-looking women in his own race….”

“Boy, if she’d let me stay here I’d give up this goddamn hunt.”

“Come on. Give a lift. You’d better hold this ladder. It seems rickety.”

“O.K.”

“Hurry up. Here comes the captain.”

Bigger was set. Then he was not set. He clung to a chimney that stood a foot from the trapdoor. Ought he to stay flat or stand up? He stood up, pushing against the chimney, trying to merge with it. He held the gun and waited. Was the man coming up? He looked to the roof to his left; it was still empty. But if he ran to it he might meet someone. He heard footsteps in the passage of the loft. Yes; the man was coming. He waited for the trapdoor to open. He held the gun tightly; he wondered if he was holding it too tightly, so tightly that it would go off before he wanted it to. His fingers were so cold that he could not tell how much pressure he was putting behind the trigger. Then, like a shooting star streaking across a black sky, the fearful thought came to him that maybe his fingers were frozen so stiff that he could not pull the trigger.
Quickly, he felt his right hand with his left; but even that did not tell him anything. His right hand was so cold that all he felt was one cold piece of flesh touching another. He had to wait and see. He had to have faith. He had to trust himself; that was all.

The trapdoor opened, slightly at first, then wide. He watched it, his mouth open, staring through the blur of tears which the cold wind had whipped into his eyes. The door came all the way open, cutting off his view for a moment, then it fell back softly upon the snow. He saw the bare head of a white man—the back of the head—framed in the narrow opening, stenciled against the yellow glare of the restless bars of light. Then the head turned slightly and Bigger saw the side of a white face. He watched the man, moving like a figure on the screen in close-up slow motion, come out of the hole and stand with his back to him, flashlight in hand. The idea took hold swiftly. Hit him. Hit him! In the head. Whether it would help or not, he did not know and it did not matter. He had to hit this man before he turned that spot of yellow on him and then yelled for the others. In the split second that he saw the man’s head, it seemed that an hour passed, an hour filled with pain and doubt and anguish and suspense, filled with the sharp throb of life lived upon a needle-point. He lifted his left hand, caught the gun which he held in his right, took it into the fingers of his left hand, turned it round, caught it again in his right and held it by the barrel: all one motion, swift, silent; done in one breath with eyes staring unblinkingly.
Hit him!
He lifted it, high, by the barrel. Yes.
Hit him!
His lips formed the words as he let it come down with a grunt which was a blending of a curse, a prayer and a groan.