Native Son - Richard Wright [199]
Max turned and looked at him; it was a casual look, devoid of the deeper awareness that Bigger sought so hungrily.
“I’m glad I got to know you, too, Bigger. I’m sorry we have to part this way. But I’m old, son. I’ll be going soon myself….”
“I remembered all them questions you asked me….”
“What questions?” Max asked, coming and sitting again on the cot.
“That night….”
“What night, son?”
Max did not even know! Bigger felt that he had been slapped. Oh, what a fool he had been to build hope upon such shifting sand! But he had to make him know!
“That night you asked me to tell all about myself,” he whimpered despairingly.
“Oh.”
He saw Max look at the floor and frown. He knew that Max was puzzled.
“You asked me questions nobody ever asked me before. You knew that I was a murderer two times over, but you treated me like a man….”
Max looked at him sharply and rose from his cot. He stood in front of Bigger for a moment and Bigger was on the verge of believing that Max knew, understood; but Max’s next words showed him that the white man was still trying to comfort him in the face of death.
“You’re human, Bigger,” Max said wearily. “It’s hell to talk about things like this to one about to die….” Max paused; Bigger knew that he was searching for words that would soothe him, and he did not want them. “Bigger,” Max said, “in the work I’m doing, I look at the world in a way that shows no whites and no blacks, no civilized and no savages…. When men are trying to change human life on earth, those little things don’t matter. You don’t notice ’em. They’re just not there. You forget them. The reason I spoke to you as I did, Bigger, is because you made me feel how badly men want to live….”
“But sometimes I wish you hadn’t asked me them questions,” Bigger said in a voice that had as much reproach in it for Max as it had for himself.
“What do you mean, Bigger?”
“They made me think and thinking’s made me scared a little….”
Max caught Bigger’s shoulders in a tight grip; then his fingers loosened and he sank back to the cot; but his eyes were still fastened upon Bigger’s face. Yes; Max knew now. Under the shadow of death, he wanted Max to tell him about life.
“Mr. Max, how can I die!” Bigger asked; knowing as the words boomed from his lips that a knowledge of how to live was a knowledge of how to die.
Max turned his face from him, and mumbled,
“Men die alone, Bigger.”
But Bigger had not heard him. In him again, imperiously, was the desire to talk, to tell; his hands were lifted in mid-air and when he spoke he tried to charge into the tone of his words what he himself wanted to hear, what he needed.
“Mr. Max, I sort of saw myself after that night. And I sort of saw other people, too.” Bigger’s voice died; he was listening to the echoes of his words in his own mind. He saw amazement and horror on Max’s face. Bigger knew that Max would rather not have him talk like this; but he could not help it. He had to die and he had to talk. “Well, it’s sort of funny, Mr. Max. I ain’t trying to dodge what’s coming to me.” Bigger was growing hysterical. “I know I’m going to get it. I’m going to die. Well, that’s all right now. But really I never wanted to hurt nobody. That’s the truth, Mr. Max. I hurt folks ’cause I felt I had to; that’s all. They was crowding me too close; they wouldn’t give me no room. Lots of times I tried to forget ’em, but I couldn’t. They wouldn’t let me….” Bigger’s eyes were wide and unseeing; his voice rushed on: “Mr. Max, I didn’t mean to do what I did. I was trying to do something else. But it seems like I never could. I was always wanting something and I was feeling that nobody would let me have it. So I fought ’em. I thought they was hard and I acted hard.” He paused, then whimpered in confession, “But I ain’t hard, Mr. Max. I ain’t hard even a little bit….” He rose to his feet. “But…. I—I won’t be crying none when they take me to that chair. But I’ll b-b-be feeling inside of me like I was crying…. I’ll be feeling and thinking that they didn’t see me and I didn’t see them….” He ran to the steel door and caught