Native Son - Richard Wright [15]
“I’m calling a cabinet meeting this afternoon at four o’clock and you, as Secretary of State, must be there.”
“Well, now, Mr. President,” Gus said, “I’m pretty busy. They raising sand over there in Germany and I got to send ’em a note….”
“But this is important,” Bigger said.
“What you going to take up at this cabinet meeting?” Gus asked.
“Well, you see, the niggers is raising sand all over the country,” Bigger said, struggling to keep back his laughter. “We’ve got to do something with these black folks….”
“Oh, if it’s about the niggers, I’ll be right there, Mr. President,” Gus said.
They hung up imaginary receivers and leaned against the wall and laughed. A street car rattled by. Bigger sighed and swore.
“Goddammit!”
“What’s the matter?”
“They don’t let us do nothing.”
“Who?”
“The white folks.”
“You talk like you just now finding that out,” Gus said.
“Naw. But I just can’t get used to it,” Bigger said. “I swear to God I can’t. I know I oughtn’t think about it, but I can’t help it. Every time I think about it I feel like somebody’s poking a red-hot iron down my throat. Goddammit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like living in jail. Half the time I feel like I’m on the outside of the world peeping in through a knothole in the fence….”
“Aw, ain’t no use feeling that way about it. It don’t help none,” Gus said.
“You know one thing?” Bigger said.
“What?”
“Sometimes I feel like something awful’s going to happen to me,” Bigger spoke with a tinge of bitter pride in his voice.
“What you mean?” Gus asked, looking at him quickly. There was fear in Gus’s eyes.
“I don’t know. I just feel that way. Every time I get to thinking about me being black and they being white, me being here and they being there, I feel like something awful’s going to happen to me….”
“Aw, for Chrissakes! There ain’t nothing you can do about it. How come you want to worry yourself? You black and they make the laws….”
“Why they make us live in one corner of the city? Why don’t they let us fly planes and run ships….”
Gus hunched Bigger with his elbow and mumbled good-naturedly, “Aw, nigger, quit thinking about it. You’ll go nuts.”
The plane was gone from the sky and the white plumes of floating smoke were thinly spread, vanishing. Because he was restless and had time on his hands, Bigger yawned again and hoisted his arms high above his head.
“Nothing ever happens,” he complained.
“What you want to happen?”
“Anything,” Bigger said with a wide sweep of his dingy palm, a sweep that included all the possible activities of the world.
Then their eyes were riveted; a slate-colored pigeon swooped down to the middle of the steel car tracks and began strutting to and fro with ruffled feathers, its fat neck bobbing with regal pride. A street car rumbled forward and the pigeon rose swiftly through the air on wings stretched so taut and sheer that Bigger could see the gold of the sun through their translucent tips. He tilted his head and watched the slate-colored bird flap and wheel out of sight over the edge of a high roof.
“Now, if I could only do that,” Bigger said.
Gus laughed.
“Nigger, you nuts.”
“I reckon we the only things in this city that can’t go where we want to go and do what we want to do.”
“Don’t think about it,” Gus said.
“I can’t help it.”
“That’s why you feeling like something awful’s going to happen to you,” Gus said. “You think too much.”
“What in hell can a man do?” Bigger asked, turning to Gus.
“Get drunk and sleep it off.”
“I can’t. I’m broke.”
Bigger crushed his cigarette and took out another one and offered the package to Gus. They continued smoking. A huge truck swept past, lifting scraps of white paper into the sunshine; the bits settled down slowly.
“Gus?”
“Hunh?”
“You know where the white folks live?”
“Yeah,” Gus said, pointing eastward. “Over across the ‘line’; over there on Cottage Grove Avenue.”
“Naw; they don’t,” Bigger said.
“What you mean?” Gus asked, puzzled. “Then, where