Native Son - Richard Wright [144]
He felt a hand touch his shoulder; he did not turn round; his eyes looked downward and saw the man’s gleaming black shoes.
“I know how you feel, boy. You’re colored and you feel that you haven’t had a square deal, don’t you?” the man’s voice came low and soft; and Bigger, listening, hated him for telling him what he knew was true. He rested his tired head against the steel bars and wondered how was it possible for this man to know so much about him and yet be so bitterly against him. “Maybe you’ve been brooding about this color question a long time, hunh, boy?” the man’s voice continued low and soft. “Maybe you think I don’t understand? But I do. I know how it feels to walk along the streets like other people, dressed like them, talking like them, and yet excluded for no reason except that you’re black. I know your people. Why, they give me votes out there on the South Side every election. I once talked to a colored boy who raped and killed a woman, just like you raped and killed Mrs. Clinton’s sister….”
“I didn’t do it!” Bigger screamed.
“Why keep saying that? If you talk, maybe the judge’ll help you. Confess it all and get it over with. You’ll feel better. Say, listen, if you tell me everything, I’ll see that you’re sent to the hospital for an examination, see? If they say you’re not responsible, then maybe you won’t have to die….”
Bigger’s anger rose. He was not crazy and he did not want to be called crazy.
“I don’t want to go to no hospital.”
“It’s a way out for you, boy.”
“I don’t want no way out.”
“Listen, start at the beginning. Who was the first woman you ever killed?”
He said nothing. He wanted to talk, but he did not like the note of intense eagerness in the man’s voice. He heard the door behind him open; he turned his head just in time to see another white man look in questioningly.
“I thought you wanted me,” the man said.
“Yes; come on in,” Buckley said.
The man came in and took a seat, holding a pencil and paper on his knee.
“Here, Bigger,” Buckley said, taking Bigger by the arm. “Sit down here and tell me all about it. Get it over with.”
Bigger wanted to tell how he had felt when Jan had held his hand; how Mary had made him feel when she asked him about how Negroes lived; the tremendous excitement that had hold of him during the day and night he had been in the Dalton home—but there were no words for him.
“You went to Mr. Dalton’s home at five-thirty that Saturday, didn’t you?”
“Yessuh,” he mumbled.
Listlessly, he talked. He traced his every action. He paused at each question Buckley asked and wondered how he could link up his bare actions with what he had felt; but his words came out flat and dull. White men were looking at him, waiting for his words, and all the feelings of his body vanished, just as they had when he was in the car between Jan and Mary. When he was through, he felt more lost and undone than when he was captured. Buckley stood up; the other white man rose and held out the papers for him to sign. He took the pen in hand. Well, why shouldn’t he sign? He was guilty. He was lost. They were going to kill him. Nobody could help him. They were standing in front of him, bending over him, looking at him, waiting. His hand shook. He signed.
Buckley slowly folded the papers and put them into his pocket. Bigger looked up at the two men, helplessly, wonderingly, Buckley looked at the other white man and smiled.
“That was not as hard as I thought it would be,” Buckley said.
“He came through like a clock,” the other man said.
Buckley looked down at Bigger and said.
“Just a scared colored boy from Mississippi.”
There was a short silence. Bigger felt that they had forgotten him already. Then he heard them speaking.
“Anything else, chief?