Native Son - Richard Wright [143]
Bigger shifted his feet and listened to the faint clang of another street car passing. The man leaned forward, caught hold of Bigger’s arm and spoke while shaking him.
“You’re hurting nobody but yourself holding out like this, boy! Tell me, were Mary, Bessie, Mrs. Clinton’s sister, and Miss Ashton the only women you raped or killed?”
The words burst out of Bigger:
“I never heard of no Miss Clinton or Miss Ashton before!”
“Didn’t you attack a girl in Jackson Park last summer?”
“Naw!”
“Didn’t you choke and rape a woman on University Avenue last fall?”
“Naw!”
“Didn’t you climb through a window out in Englewood last fall and rape a woman?”
“Naw; naw! I tell you I didn’t!”
“You’re not telling the truth, boy. Lying won’t get you anywhere.”
“I am telling the truth!”
“Whose idea was the kidnap note? Jan’s?”
“He didn’t have nothing to do with it,” said Bigger, feeling a keen desire on the man’s part to have him implicate Jan.
“What’s the use of your holding out, boy? Make it easy for yourself.”
Why not talk and get it over with? They knew he was guilty. They could prove it. If he did not talk, then they would say he had committed every crime they could think of.
“Boy, why didn’t you and your pals rob Blum’s store like you’d planned to last Saturday?”
Bigger looked at him in surprise. They had found that out, too!
“You didn’t think I knew about that, did you? I know a lot more, boy. I know about that dirty trick you and your friend Jack pulled off in the Regal Theatre, too. You wonder how I know it? The manager told us when we were checking up. I know what boys like you do, Bigger. Now, come on. You wrote that kidnap note, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he sighed. “I wrote it.”
“Who helped you?”
“Nobody.”
“Who was going to help you to collect the ransom money?”
“Bessie.”
“Come on. Was it Jan?”
“Naw.”
“Bessie?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why did you kill her?”
Nervously, Bigger’s fingers fumbled with a pack of cigarettes and got one out. The man struck a match and held a light for him, but he struck his own match and ignored the offered flame.
“When I saw I couldn’t get the money, I killed her to keep her from talking,” he said.
“And you killed Mary, too?”
“I didn’t mean to kill her, but it don’t matter now,” he said.
“Did you lay her?”
“Naw.”
“You laid Bessie before you killed her. The doctors said so. And now you expect me to believe you didn’t lay Mary.”
“I didn’t!”
“Did Jan?”
“Naw.”
“Didn’t Jan lay her first and then you?…”
“Naw; naw….”
“But Jan wrote the kidnap note, didn’t he?”
“I never saw Jan before that night.”
“But didn’t he write the note?”
“Naw; I tell you he didn’t.”
“You wrote the note?”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t Jan tell you to write it?”
“Naw.”
“Why did you kill Mary?”
He did not answer.
“See here, boy. What you say doesn’t make sense. You were never in the Dalton home until Saturday night. Yet, in one night a girl is raped, killed, burnt, and the next night a kidnap note is sent. Come on. Tell me everything that happened and about everybody who helped you.”
“There wasn’t nobody but me. I don’t care what happens to me, but you can’t make me say things about other people.”
“But you told Mr. Dalton that Jan was in this thing, too.”
“I was trying to blame it on him.”
“Well, come on. Tell me everything that happened.”
Bigger rose and went to the window. His hands caught the cold steel bars in a hard grip. He knew as he stood there that he could never tell why he had killed. It was not that he did not really want to tell, but the telling of it would have involved an explanation of his entire life. The actual killing of Mary and Bessie was not what concerned him most; it was knowing and feeling that he could never make anybody know what had driven him to it. His crimes were known, but what he had felt before he committed them would