Native Son - Richard Wright [13]
“Good-bye, Bigger.”
He looked up and saw Vera passing with a sewing kit dangling from her arm. She paused at the corner and came back to him.
“Now, what you want?”
“Bigger, please…. You’re getting a good job now. Why don’t you stay away from Jack and Gus and G.H. and keep out of trouble?”
“You keep your big mouth out of my business!”
“But, Bigger!”
“Go on to school, will you!”
She turned abruptly and walked on. He knew that his mother had been talking to Vera and Buddy about him, telling them that if he got into any more trouble he would be sent to prison and not just to the reform school, where they sent him last time. He did not mind what his mother said to Buddy about him. Buddy was all right. Tough, plenty. But Vera was a sappy girl; she did not have any more sense than to believe everything she was told.
He walked toward the poolroom. When he got to the door he saw Gus half a block away, coming toward him. He stopped and waited. It was Gus who had first thought of robbing Blum’s.
“Hi, Bigger!”
“What you saying, Gus?”
“Nothing. Seen G.H. or Jack yet?”
“Naw. You?”
“Naw. Say, got a cigarette?”
“Yeah.”
Bigger took out his pack and gave Gus a cigarette; he lit his and held the match for Gus. They leaned their backs against the red-brick wall of a building, smoking, their cigarettes slanting white across their black chins. To the east Bigger saw the sun burning a dazzling yellow. In the sky above him a few big white clouds drifted. He puffed silently, relaxed, his mind pleasantly vacant of purpose. Every slight movement in the street evoked a casual curiosity in him. Automatically, his eyes followed each car as it whirred over the smooth black asphalt. A woman came by and he watched the gentle sway of her body until she disappeared into a doorway. He sighed, scratched his chin and mumbled,
“Kinda warm today.”
“Yeah,” Gus said.
“You get more heat from this sun than from them old radiators at home.”
“Yeah; them old white landlords sure don’t give much heat.”
“And they always knocking at your door for money.”
“I’ll be glad when summer comes.”
“Me too,” Bigger said.
He stretched his arms above his head and yawned; his eyes moistened. The sharp precision of the world of steel and stone dissolved into blurred waves. He blinked and the world grew hard again, mechanical, distinct. A weaving motion in the sky made him turn his eyes upward; he saw a slender streak of billowing white blooming against the deep blue. A plane was writing high up in the air.
“Look!” Bigger said.
“What?”
“That plane writing up there,” Bigger said, pointing.
“Oh!”
They squinted at a tiny ribbon of unfolding vapor that spelled out the word: USE…. The plane was so far away that at times the strong glare of the sun blanked it from sight.
“You can hardly see it,” Gus said.
“Looks like a little bird,” Bigger breathed with childlike wonder.
“Them white boys sure can fly,” Gus said.
“Yeah,” Bigger said, wistfully. “They get a chance to do everything.”
Noiselessly, the tiny plane looped and veered, vanishing and appearing, leaving behind it a long trail of white plumage, like coils of fluffy paste being squeezed from a tube; a plume-coil that grew and swelled and slowly began to fade into the air at the edges. The plane wrote another word: SPEED….
“How high you reckon he is?” Bigger asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe a hundred miles; maybe a thousand.”
“I could fly one of them things if I had a chance,” Bigger mumbled reflectively, as though talking to himself.
Gus pulled down the corners of his lips, stepped out from the wall, squared his shoulders, doffed his cap, bowed low and spoke with mock deference:
“Yessuh.”
“You go to hell,” Bigger