Native Son - Richard Wright [55]
“The fire was very hot last night,” Peggy said. “But this morning it got low.”
“I’ll fix it,” Bigger said, standing and not daring to open the door of the furnace while she stood there beside him in the red darkness.
He heard the dull roar of the draft going upwards and wondered if she suspected anything. He knew that he should have turned on the light; but what if he did and the light revealed parts of Mary in the furnace?
“I’ll fix it, mam,” he said again.
Quickly, he wondered if he would have to kill her to keep her from telling if she turned on the light and saw something that made her think that Mary was dead? Without turning his head he saw an iron shovel resting in a near-by corner. His hands clenched. Peggy moved from his side toward a light that swung from the ceiling at the far end of the room near the stairs.
“I’ll give you some light,” she said.
He moved silently and quickly toward the shovel and waited to see what would happen. The light came on, blindingly bright; he blinked. Peggy stood near the steps holding her right hand tightly over her breast. She had on a kimono and was trying to hold it closely about her. Bigger understood at once. She was not even thinking of the furnace; she was just a little ashamed of having been seen in the basement in her kimono.
“Has Miss Dalton come down yet?” she asked over her shoulder as she went up the steps.
“No’m. I haven’t seen her.”
“You just come?”
“Yessum.”
She stopped and looked back at him.
“But the car, it’s in the driveway.”
“Yessum,” he said simply, not volunteering any information.
“Then it stayed out all night?”
“I don’t know, mam.”
“Didn’t you put it in the garage?”
“No’m. Miss Dalton told me to leave it out.”
“Oh! Then it did stay out all night. That’s why it’s covered with snow.”
“I reckon so, mam.”
Peggy shook her head and sighed.
“Well, I suppose she’ll be ready for you to take her to the station in a few minutes.”
“Yessum.”
“I see you brought the trunk down.”
“Yessum. She told me to bring it down last night.”
“Don’t forget it,” she said, going through the kitchen door.
For a long time after she had gone he did not move from his tracks. Then, slowly, he looked round the basement, turning his head like an animal with eyes and ears alert, searching to see if anything was amiss. The room was exactly as he had left it last night. He walked about, looking closer. All at once he stopped, his eyes widening. Directly in front of him he saw a small piece of blood-stained newspaper lying in the livid reflection cast by the cracks in the door of the furnace. Had Peggy seen that? He ran to the light and turned it out and ran back and looked at the piece of paper. He could barely see it. That meant that Peggy had not seen it. How about Mary? Had she burned? He turned the light back on and picked up the piece of paper. He glanced to the left and right to see if anyone was watching, then opened the furnace door and peered in, his eyes filled with the vision of Mary and her bloody throat. The inside of the furnace breathed and quivered in the grip of fiery coals. But there was no sign of the body, even though the body’s image hovered before his eyes, between his eyes and the bed of coals burning hotly. Like the oblong mound of fresh clay of a newly made grave, the red coals revealed the bent outline of Mary’s body He had the feeling that if he simply touched that red oblong mound with his finger it would cave in and Mary’s body would come into full view, unburnt. The coals had the appearance of having burnt the body beneath, leaving the glowing embers formed into a shell of red hotness with a hollowed space in the center, keeping still in the embrace of the quivering coals the huddled shape of Mary’s body. He blinked his eyes and became aware that he still held the piece of paper in his hand. He lifted it to the level of the door and the draft sucked it from his fingers; he watched it fly into the red trembling heat, smoke, turn black, blaze, then vanish.
He shut the door and pulled the lever for more coal. The rattling of the tiny lumps against the tin sides of the chute came loudly to his ears as the oblong mound of red fire turned gradually black and blazed from the fanwise spreading of coal whirling into the furnace. He shut off the lever and stood up; things were all right so far. As long as no one poked round in that fire, things would be all right. He himself did not want to poke in it, for fear that some part of Mary was still there. If things could go on like this until afternoon, Mary would be burned enough to make him safe. He turned and looked at the trunk again. Oh! He must not forget! He had to put those Communist pamphlets in his room right away. He ran back of the furnace, up the steps to his room and placed the pamphlets smoothly and neatly in a corner of his dresser drawer. Yes, they would have to be stacked neatly. No one must think that he had read them.