Native Son - Richard Wright [81]
“Naw; naw! Bigger, don’t! Don’t!”
Slowly, his arm relaxed and hung at his side; she fell to sobbing again. He was afraid that he would have to kill her before it was all over. She would not do to take along, and he could not leave her behind.
“All right,” he said. “But you better do the right thing.”
He put the knife on the dresser and got the flashlight from his overcoat pocket and then stood over her with the letter and flashlight in his hand.
“Come on,” he said. “Get your coat on.”
“Not tonight, Bigger! Not tonight….”
“It won’t be tonight. But I got to show you what to do.”
“But it’s cold. It’s snowing….”
“Sure. And nobody’ll see us. Come on!”
She pulled up; he watched her struggle into her coat. Now and then she paused and looked at him, blinking back her tears. When she was dressed, he put on his coat and cap and led her to the street. The air was thick with snow. The wind blew hard. It was a blizzard. The street lamps were faint smudges of yellow. They walked to the corner and waited for a car.
“I’d rather do anything but this,” she said.
“Stop now. We’re in it.”
“Bigger, honey, I’d run off with you. I’d work for you, baby. We don’t have to do this. Don’t you believe I love you?”
“Don’t try that on me now.”
The car came; he helped her on and sat down beside her and looked past her face at the silent snow flying white and wild outside the window. He brought his eyes farther round and looked at her; she was staring with blank eyes, like a blind woman waiting for some word to tell her where she was going. Once she cried and he gripped her shoulder so tightly that she stopped, more absorbed in the painful pressure of steel-like fingers than in her fate. They got off at Thirty-sixth Place and walked over to Michigan Avenue. When they reached the corner, Bigger stopped and made her stop by gripping her arm again. They were in front of the high, white, empty building with black windows.
“Where we going?”
“Right here.”
“Bigger,” she whimpered.
“Come on, now. Don’t start that!”
“But I don’t want to.”
“You got to.”
He looked up and down the street, past ghostly lamps that shed a long series of faintly shimmering cones of yellow against the snowy night. He took her to the front entrance which gave into a vast pool of inky silence. He brought out the flashlight and focused the round spot on a rickety stairway leading upward into a still blacker darkness. The planks creaked as he led her up. Now and then he felt his shoes sink into a soft, cushy substance. Cobwebs brushed his face. All round him was the dank smell of rotting timber. He stopped abruptly as something with dry whispering feet flitted across his path, emitting as the rush of its flight died a thin, piping wail of lonely fear.
“Ooow!”
Bigger whirled and centered the spot of light on Bessie’s face. Her lips were drawn back, her mouth was open, and her hands were lifted midway to white-rimmed eyes.
“What you trying to do?” he asked. “Tell the whole world we in here?”
“Oh, Bigger!”
“Come on!”
After a few feet he stopped and swung the light. He saw dusty walls, walls almost like those of the Dalton home. The doorways were wider than those of any house in which he had ever lived. Some rich folks lived here once, he thought. Rich white folks. That was the way most houses on the South Side were, ornate, old, stinking; homes once of rich white people, now inhabited by Negroes or standing dark and empty with yawning black windows. He remembered that bombs had been thrown by whites into houses like these when Negroes had first moved into the South Side. He swept the disc of yellow and walked gingerly down a hall and into a room at the front of the house. It was feebly lit from the street lamps outside; he switched off the flashlight and looked round. The room had six large windows. By standing close to any of them, the streets in all four directions were visible.
“See, Bessie….”
He turned to look at her and found that she was not there. He called tensely:
“Bessie!”
There was no answer; he bounded to the doorway and switched on the flashlight. She was leaning against a wall, sobbing. He went to her, caught her arm and yanked her back into the room.