Native Son - Richard Wright [16]
“Remember what we talked about so much?” Bigger asked in a flat, neutral tone.
“Naw.”
“Old Blum.”
“Oh,” Gus said. “We ain’t talked about that for a month. How come you think of it all of a sudden?”
“Let’s clean the place out.”
“I don’t know.”
“It was your plan from the start,” Bigger said.
Gus straightened and stared at Bigger, then at Doc who was looking out of the front window.
“You going to tell Doc? Can’t you never learn to talk low?”
“Aw, I was just asking you, do you want to try it?”
“Naw.”
“How come? You scared ’cause he’s a white man?”
“Naw. But Blum keeps a gun. Suppose he beats us to it?”
“Aw, you scared; that’s all. He’s a white man and you scared.”
“The hell I’m scared,” Gus, hurt and stung, defended himself.
Bigger went to Gus and placed an arm about his shoulders.
“Listen, you won’t have to go in. You just stand at the door and keep watch, see? Me and Jack and G.H.’ll go in. If anybody comes along, you whistle and we’ll go out the back way. That’s all.”
The front door opened; they stopped talking and turned their heads.
“Here comes Jack and G.H. now,” Bigger said.
Jack and G.H. walked to the rear of the poolroom.
“What you guys doing?” Jack asked.
“Shooting a game. Wanna play?” Bigger asked.
“You asking ’em to play and I’m paying for the game,” Gus said.
They all laughed and Bigger laughed with them but stopped quickly. He felt that the joke was on him and he took a seat alongside the wall and propped his feet upon the rungs of a chair, as though he had not heard. Gus and G.H. kept on laughing.
“You niggers is crazy,” Bigger said. “You laugh like monkeys and you ain’t got nerve enough to do nothing but talk.”
“What you mean?” G.H. asked.
“I got a haul all figured out,” Bigger said.
“What haul?”
“Old Blum’s.”
There was silence. Jack lit a cigarette. Gus looked away, avoiding the conversation.
“If old Blum was a black man, you-all would be itching to go. ’Cause he’s white, everybody’s scared.”
“I ain’t scared,” Jack said. “I’m with you.”
“You say you got it all figured out?” G.H. asked.
Bigger took a deep breath and looked from face to face. It seemed to him that he should not have to explain.
“Look, it’ll be easy. There ain’t nothing to be scared of. Between three and four ain’t nobody in the store but the old man. The cop is way down at the other end of the block. One of us’ll stay outside and watch. Three of us’ll go in, see? One of us’ll throw a gun on old Blum; one of us’ll make for the cash box under the counter; one of us’ll make for the back door and have it open so we can make a quick get-away down the back alley…. That’s all. It won’t take three minutes.”
“I thought we said we wasn’t never going to use a gun,” G.H. said. “And we ain’t bothered no white folks before.”
“Can’t you see? This is something big,” Bigger said.
He waited for more objections. When none were forthcoming he talked again.
“We can do it, if you niggers ain’t scared.”
Save for the sound of Doc’s whistling up front, there was silence. Bigger watched Jack closely; he knew that the situation was one in which Jack’s word would be decisive. Bigger was afraid of Gus, because he knew that Gus would not hold out if Jack said yes. Gus stood at the table, toying with a cue stick, his eyes straying lazily over the billiard balls scattered about the table in the array of an unfinished game. Bigger rose and sent the balls whirling with a sweep of his hand, then looked straight at Gus as the gleaming balls kissed and rebounded from the rubber cushions, zig-zagging across the table’s green cloth. Even though Bigger had asked Gus to be with him in the robbery, the fear that Gus would really go made the muscles of Bigger’s stomach tighten; he was hot all over. He felt as if he wanted to sneeze and could not; only it was more nervous than wanting to sneeze. He grew hotter, tighter; his nerves were taut and his teeth were on edge. He felt that something would soon snap within him.
“Goddammit! Say something, somebody!”
“I’m in,” Jack said again.
“I’ll go if the rest goes,” G.H. said.
Gus stood without speaking and Bigger felt a curious sensation