Native Son - Richard Wright [137]
“Boy, why didn’t you and your pals rob Blum’s store like you’d planned to last Saturday?”
Bigger looked at him in surprise. They had found that out, too!
“You didn’t think I knew about that, did you? I know a lot more, boy. I know about that dirty trick you and your friend Jack pulled off in the Regal Theatre, too. You wonder how I know it? The manager told us when we were checking up. I know what boys like you do, Bigger. Now, come on. You wrote that kidnap note, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “I wrote it.”
“Who helped you?”
“Nobody.”
“Who was going to help you to collect the ransom money?”
“Bessie.”
“Come on. Was it Jan?”
“Naw.”
“Bessie?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why did you kill her?”
Nervously, Bigger’s fingers fumbled with a pack of cigarettes and got one out. The man struck a match and held a light for him, but he struck his own match and ignored the offered flame.
“When I saw I couldn’t get the money, I killed her to keep her from talking,” he said.
“And you killed Mary, too?”
“I didn’t mean to kill her, but it don’t matter now,” he said.
“Did you lay her?”
“Naw.”
“You laid Bessie before you killed her. The doctors said so. And now you expect me to believe you didn’t lay Mary.”
“I didn’t!”
“Did Jan?”
“Naw.”
“Didn’t Jan lay her first and then you?…”
“Naw; naw….”
“But Jan wrote the kidnap note, didn’t he?”
“I never saw Jan before that night.”
“But didn’t he write the note?”
“Naw; I tell you he didn’t.”
“You wrote the note?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t Jan tell you to write it?”
“Naw.”
“Why did you kill Mary?”
He did not answer.
“See here, boy. What you say doesn’t make sense. You were never in the Dalton home until Saturday night. Yet, in one night a girl is raped, killed, burnt, and the next night a kidnap note is sent. Come on. Tell me everything that happened and about everybody who helped you.”
“There wasn’t nobody but me. I don’t care what happens to me, but you can’t make me say things about other people.”
“But you told Mr. Dalton that Jan was in this thing, too.”
“I was trying to blame it on him.”
“Well, come on. Tell me everything that happened.”
Bigger rose and went to the window. His hands caught the cold steel bars in a hard grip. He knew as he stood there that he could never tell why he had killed. It was not that he did not really want to tell, but the telling of it would have involved an explanation of his entire life. The actual killing of Mary and Bessie was not what concerned him most; it was knowing and feeling that he could never make anybody know what had driven him to it. His crimes were known, but what he had felt before he committed them would never be known. He would have gladly admitted his guilt if he had thought that in doing so he could have also given in the same breath a sense of the deep, choking hate that had been his life, a hate that he had not wanted to have, but could not help having. How could he do that? The impulsion to try to tell was as deep as had been the urge to kill.
He felt a hand touch his shoulder; he did not turn round; his eyes looked downward and saw the man’s gleaming black shoes.
“I know how you feel, boy. You’re colored and you feel that you haven’t had a square deal, don’t you?” the man’s voice came low and soft; and Bigger, listening, hated him for telling him what he knew was true. He rested his tired head against the steel bars and wondered how was it possible for this man to know so much about him and yet be so bitterly against him. “Maybe you’ve been brooding about this color question a long time, hunh, boy?” the man’s voice continued low and soft. “Maybe you think I don’t understand? But I do. I know how it feels to walk along the streets like other people, dressed like them, talking like them, and yet excluded for no reason except that you’re black. I know your people. Why, they give me votes out there on the South Side every election. I once talked to a colored boy who raped and killed a woman, just like you raped and killed Mrs. Clinton’s sister….”
“I didn’t do it!” Bigger screamed.
“Why keep saying that? If you talk, maybe the judge