Native Son - Richard Wright [82]
“Come on! You got to do better than this.”
“I’d rather have you kill me right now,” she sobbed.
“Don’t you say that again!”
She was silent. His black open palm swept upward in a swift narrow arc and smacked solidly against her face.
“You want me to wake you up?”
She bent her head to her knees; he caught hold of her arm again and dragged her to the window. He spoke like a man who had been running and was out of breath:
“Now, look. All you got to do is come here tomorrow night, see? Ain’t nothing going to bother you. I’m seeing to everything. Don’t you worry none. You just do what I say. You come here and just watch. About twelve o’clock a car’ll come along. It’ll be blinking its headlights, see? When it comes, you just raise this flashlight and blink it three times, see? Like this. Remember that. Then watch that car. It’ll throw out a package. Watch that package, ’cause the money’ll be in it. It’ll go into the snow. Look and see if anybody’s about. If you see nobody, then go and get the package and go home. But don’t go straight home. Make sure nobody’s watching you, nobody’s following you, see? Ride three or four street cars and transfer fast. Get off about five blocks from home and look behind you as you walk, see? Now, look. You can see up and down Michigan and Thirty-sixth. You can see if anybody’s watching. I’ll be in the white folks’ house all day tomorrow. If they put anybody out to watch, I’ll let you know not to come.”
“Bigger….”
“Come on, now.”
“Take me home.”
“You going to do it?”
She did not answer.
“You already in it,” he said. “You got part of the money.”
“I reckon it don’t make no difference,” she sighed.
“It’ll be easy.”
“It won’t. I’ll get caught. But it don’t make no difference. I’m lost anyhow. I was lost when I took up with you. I’m lost and it don’t matter….”
“Come on.”
He led her back to the car stop. He said nothing as they waited in the whirling snow. When he heard the car coming, he took her purse from her, opened it and put the flashlight inside. The car stopped; he helped her on, put seven cents in her trembling hand and stood in the snow watching her black face through the window white with ice as the car moved off slowly through the night.
He walked to Dalton’s through the snow. His right hand was in his coat pocket, his fingers about the kidnap note. When he reached the driveway, he looked about the street carefully. There was no one. He looked at the house; it was white, huge, silent. He walked up the steps and stood in front of the door. He waited a moment to see what would happen. So deeply conscious was he of violating dangerous taboo, that he felt that the very air or sky would suddenly speak, commanding him to stop. He was sailing fast into the face of a cold wind that all but sucked his breath from him; but he liked it. Around him were silence and night and snow falling, falling as though it had fallen from the beginning of time and would always fall till the end of the world. He took the letter out of his pocket and slipped it under the door. Turning, he ran down the steps and round the house. I done it! I done it now! They’ll see it tonight or in the morning…. He went to the basement door, opened it and looked inside; no one was there. Like an enraged beast, the furnace throbbed with heat, suffusing a red glare over everything. He stood in front of the cracks and watched the restless embers. Had Mary burned completely? He wanted to poke round in the coals to see, but dared not; he flinched from it even in thought. He pulled the lever for more coal, then went to his room.
When he stretched out on his bed in the dark he found that his whole body was trembling. He was cold and hungry. While lying there shaking, a hot bath of fear, hotter than his blood, engulfed him, bringing him to his feet. He stood in the middle of the floor, seeing vivid images of his gloves, his pencil, and paper. How on earth had he forgotten them? He had to burn them. He would do it right now. He pulled on the light and went to his overcoat and got the gloves and pencil and paper and stuffed them into his shirt. He went to the door, listened a moment, then went into the hall and down the stairs to the furnace. He stood a moment before the gleaming cracks. Hurriedly, he opened the door and dumped the gloves and pencil and paper in; he watched them smoke, blaze; he closed the door and heard them burn in a furious whirlwind of draft.