Native Son (41 page)

“That was not as hard as I thought it would be,” Buckley said.

“He came through like a clock,” the other man said.

Buckley looked down at Bigger and said.

“Just a scared colored boy from Mississippi.”

There was a short silence. Bigger felt that they had forgotten him already. Then he heard them speaking.

“Anything else, chief?”

“Naw. I’ll be at my club. Let me know how the inquest turns out.”

“O.K., chief.”

“So long.”

“I’ll be seeing you, chief.”

Bigger felt so empty and beaten that he slid to the floor. He heard the feet of the men walking away softly. The door opened and shut. He was alone, profoundly, inescapably. He rolled on the floor and sobbed, wondering what it was that had hold of him, why he was here.

He lay on the cold floor sobbing; but really he was standing up strongly with contrite heart, holding his life in his hands, staring at it with a wondering question. He lay on the cold floor sobbing; but really he was pushing forward with his puny strength against a world too big and too strong for him. He lay on the cold floor sobbing; but really he was groping forward with fierce zeal into a welter of circumstances which he felt contained a water of mercy for the thirst of his heart and brain.

He wept because he had once again trusted his feelings and
they had betrayed him. Why should he have felt the need to try to make his feelings known? And why did not he hear resounding echoes of his feelings in the hearts of others? There were times when he did hear echoes, but always they were couched in tones which, living as a Negro, he could not answer or accept without losing face with the world which had first evoked in him the song of manhood. He feared and hated the preacher because the preacher had told him to bow down and ask for a mercy he knew he needed; but his pride would never let him do that, not this side of the grave, not while the sun shone. And Jan? And Max? They were telling him to believe in himself. Once before he had accepted completely what his life had made him feel, even unto murder. He had emptied the vessel which life had filled for him and found the emptying meaningless. Yet the vessel was full again, waiting to be poured out. But no! Not blindly this time! He felt that he could not move again unless he swung out from the base of his own feelings; he felt that he would have to have light in order to act now.

Gradually, more from a lessening of strength than from peace of soul, his sobs ceased and he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. He had confessed and death loomed now for certain in a public future. How could he go to his death with white faces looking on and saying that only death would cure him for having flung into their faces his feeling of being black? How could death be victory now?

He sighed, pulled up off the floor and lay on the cot, half-awake, half-asleep. The door opened and four policemen came and stood above him; one touched his shoulder.

“Come on, boy.”

He rose and looked at them questioningly.

“You’re going back to the inquest.”

They clicked the handcuffs upon his wrists and led him into the hall, to a waiting elevator. The doors closed and he dropped downward through space, standing between four tall, silent men in blue. The elevator stopped; the doors opened and he saw a restless crowd
of people and heard a babble of voices. They led him through a narrow aisle.

“That sonofa
bitch
!”

“Gee, isn’t he
black
!”

“Kill ’im!”

A hard blow came to his temple and he slumped to the floor. The faces and voices left him. Pain throbbed in his head and the right side of his face numbed. He held up an elbow to protect himself; they yanked him back upon his feet. When his sight cleared he saw policemen struggling with a slender white man. Shouts rose in a mighty roar. To the front of him a white man pounded with a hammer-like piece of wood upon a table.

“Quiet! Or the room’ll be cleared of everybody except witnesses!”

The clamor ceased. The policemen pushed Bigger into a chair. Stretching to the four walls of the room was a solid sheet of white faces. Standing with squared shoulders all round were policemen with clubs in hand, silver metal on their chests, faces red and stern, grey and blue eyes alert. To the right of the man at the table, in rows of three each, six men sat still and silent, their hats and overcoats on their knees. Bigger looked about and saw the pile of white bones lying atop a table; beside them lay the kidnap note, held in place by a bottle of ink. In the center of the table were white sheets of paper fastened together by a metal clasp; it was his signed confession. And there was Mr. Dalton, white-faced, white-haired; and beside him was Mrs. Dalton, still and straight, her face, as always, tilted trustingly upward, to one side. Then he saw the trunk into which he had stuffed Mary’s body, the trunk which he had lugged down the stairs and had carried to the station. And, yes, there was the blackened hatchet blade and a tiny round piece of metal. Bigger felt a tap on his shoulder and looked round; Max was smiling at him.

“Take it easy, Bigger. You won’t have to say anything here. It won’t be long.”

The man at the front table rapped again.

“Is there a member of the deceased’s family here, one who can give us the family history?”

A murmur swept the room. A woman rose hurriedly and went to the blind Mrs. Dalton, caught hold of her arm, led her forward to a seat to the extreme right of the man at the table, facing the six men in the rows of chairs. That must be Mrs. Patterson, Bigger thought, remembering the woman Peggy had mentioned as Mrs. Dalton’s maid.

“Will you please raise your right hand?”

Mrs. Dalton’s frail, waxen hand went up timidly. The man asked Mrs. Dalton if the testimony she was about to give was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God, and Mrs. Dalton answered,

“Yes, sir; I do.”

Bigger sat stolidly, trying not to let the crowd detect any fear in him. His nerves were painfully taut as he hung onto the old woman’s words. Under the man’s questioning, Mrs. Dalton said that her age was fifty-three, that she lived at 4605 Drexel Boulevard, that she was a retired school teacher, that she was the mother of Mary Dalton and the wife of Henry Dalton. When the man began asking questions relating to Mary, the crowd leaned forward in their seats. Mrs. Dalton said that Mary was twenty-three years of age, single; that she carried about thirty thousand dollars’ worth of insurance, that she owned real estate amounting to approximately a quarter of a million dollars, and that she was active right up to the date of her death. Mrs. Dalton’s voice came tense and faint and Bigger wondered how much more of this he could stand. Would it not have been much better to have stood up in the full glare of those roving knives of light and let them shoot him down? He could have cheated them out of this show, this hunt, this eager sport.

“Mrs. Dalton,” the man said, “I’m the Deputy Coroner and it is with considerable anxiety that I ask you these questions. But it is necessary for me to trouble you in order to establish the identity of the deceased….”

“Yes, sir,” Mrs. Dalton whispered.

Carefully, the coroner lifted from the table at his side a tiny piece of blackened metal; he turned, fronted Mrs. Dalton, then
paused. The room was so quiet that Bigger could hear the coroner’s footsteps on the wooden floor as he walked to Mrs. Dalton’s chair. Tenderly, he caught her hand in his and said,

“I’m placing in your hand a metal object which the police retrieved from the ashes of the furnace in the basement of your home. Mrs. Dalton, I want you to feel this metal carefully and tell me if you remember ever having felt it before.”

Bigger wanted to turn his eyes away, but he could not. He watched Mrs. Dalton’s face; he saw the hand tremble that held the blackened bit of metal. Bigger jerked his head round. A woman began to sob without restraint. A wave of murmurs rose through the room. The coroner took a quick step back to the table and rapped sharply with his knuckles. The room was instantly quiet, save for the sobbing woman. Bigger looked back to Mrs. Dalton. Both of her hands were now fumbling nervously with the piece of metal; then her shoulders shook. She was crying.

“Do you recognize it?”

“Y-y-yes….”

“What is it?”

“A-a-an earring….”

“When did you first come in contact with it?”

Mrs. Dalton composed her face, and, with tears on her cheeks, answered,

“When I was a girl, years ago….”

“Do you remember precisely when?”

“Thirty-five years ago.”

“You once owned it?”

“Yes; it was one of a pair.”

“Yes, Mrs. Dalton. No doubt the other earring was destroyed in the fire. This one dropped through the grates into the bin under the furnace. Now, Mrs. Dalton, how long did you own this pair of earrings?”

“For thirty-three years.”

“How did they come into your possession?”

“Well, my mother gave them to me when I was of age. My
grandmother gave them to my mother when she was of age, and I in turn gave them to my daughter when she was of age….”

“What do you mean, of age?”

“At eighteen.”

“And when did you give them to your daughter?”

“About five years ago.”

“She wore them all the time?”

“Yes.”

“Are you positive that this is one of the same earrings?”

“Yes. There can be no mistake. They were a family heirloom. There are no two others like them. My grandmother had them designed and made to order.”

“Mrs. Dalton, when were you last in the company of the deceased?”

“Last Saturday night, or I should say, early Sunday morning.”

“At what time?”

“It was nearly two o’clock, I think.”

“Where was she?”

“In her room, in bed.”

“Were you in the habit of seeing, I mean, in the habit of meeting your daughter at such an hour?”

“No. I knew that she’d planned to go to Detroit Sunday morning. When I heard her come in I wanted to find out why she’d stayed out so late….”

“Did you speak with her?”

“No. I called her several times, but she did not answer.”

“Did you touch her?”

“Yes; slightly.”

“But she did not speak to you?”

“Well, I heard some mumbling….”

“Do you know who it was?”

“No.”

“Mrs. Dalton, could your daughter by any means, in your judgment, have been dead then, and you not have known or suspected it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know if your daughter was alive when you spoke to her?”

“I don’t know. I assumed she was.”

“Was there anyone else in the room at the time?”

“I don’t know. But I felt strange there.”

“Strange? What do you mean, strange?”

“I—I don’t know. I wasn’t satisfied, for some reason. It seemed to me that there was something I should have done, or said. But I kept saying to myself, ‘She’s asleep; that’s all.’ ”

“If you felt so dissatisfied, why did you leave the room without trying to awaken her?”

Mrs. Dalton paused before answering; her thin mouth was wide open and her face tilted far to one side.

“I smelt alcohol in the room,” she whispered.

“Yes?”

“I thought Mary was intoxicated.”

“Had you ever encountered your daughter intoxicated before?”

“Yes; and that was why I thought she was intoxicated then. It was the same odor.”

“Mrs. Dalton, if someone had possessed your daughter sexually while she lay on that bed, could you in any way have detected it?”

The room buzzed. The coroner rapped for order.

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Just a few more questions, please, Mrs. Dalton. What aroused your suspicions that something had befallen your daughter?”

“When I went to her room the next morning I felt her bed and found that she had not slept in it. Next I felt in her clothes rack and found that she had not taken the new clothes she had bought.”

“Mrs. Dalton, you and your husband have given large sums of money to Negro educational institutions, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Could you tell us roughly how much?”

“Over five million dollars.”

“You bear no ill will toward the Negro people?”

“No; none whatever.”

“Mrs. Dalton, please, tell us what was the last thing you did when you stood above your daughter’s bed that Sunday morning?”

“I—I….” She paused, lowered her head and dabbed at her eyes. “I knelt at the bedside and prayed….” she said, her words coming in a sharp breath of despair.

“That is all. Thank you, Mrs. Dalton.”

The room heaved a sigh. Bigger saw the woman lead Mrs. Dalton back to her seat. Many eyes in the room were fastened upon Bigger now, cold grey and blue eyes, eyes whose tense hate was worse than a shout or a curse. To get rid of that concentrated gaze, he stopped looking, even though his eyes remained open.

The coroner turned to the men sitting in rows to his right and said,

“You gentlemen, the jurors, are any of you acquainted with the deceased or are any of you members of the family?”

One of the men rose and said,

“No, sir.”

“Would there be any reason why you could not render a fair and impartial verdict in this?”

“No, sir.”

“Is there any objection to these men serving as jurors in this case?” the coroner asked of the entire room.

There was no answer.

“In the name of the coroner, I will ask the jurors to rise, pass by this table, and view the remains of the deceased, one Mary Dalton.”

In silence the six men rose and filed past the table, each looking at the pile of white bones. When they were seated again, the coroner called,

“We will now hear Mr. Jan Erlone!”

Jan rose, came forward briskly, and was asked to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God. Bigger wondered if Jan would turn on him now. He wondered if he could really trust any white man, even this white man who had come and offered him his friendship. He leaned forward
to hear. Jan was asked several times if he was a foreigner and Jan said no. The coroner walked close to Jan’s chair and leaned the upper part of his body forward and asked in a loud voice,