Native Son - Richard Wright [48]
He hurried home and ran up the steps and went on tiptoe into the room. His mother and brother and sister breathed regularly in sleep. He began to undress, thinking, I’ll tell ’em I left her with Jan in the car after I took the trunk down in the basement. In the morning I’ll take the trunk to the station, like she told me….
He felt something heavy sagging in his shirt; it was the gun. He took it out; it was warm and wet. He shoved it under the pillow. They can’t say I did it. If they do, they can’t prove it.
He eased the covers of the bed back and slipped beneath them and stretched out beside Buddy; in five minutes he was sound asleep.
BOOK TWO
FLIGHT
It seemed to Bigger that no sooner had he closed his eyes than he was wide awake again, suddenly and violently, as though someone had grabbed his shoulders and had shaken him. He lay on his back, in bed, hearing and seeing nothing. Then, like an electric switch being clicked on, he was aware that the room was filled with pale daylight. Somewhere deep in him a thought formed: It’s morning. Sunday morning. He lifted himself on his elbows and cocked his head in an attitude of listening. He heard his mother and brother and sister breathing softly, in deep sleep. He saw the room and saw snow falling past the window; but his mind formed no image of any of these. They simply existed, unrelated to each other; the snow and the daylight and the soft sound of breathing cast a strange spell upon him, a spell that waited for the wand of fear to touch it and endow it with reality and meaning. He lay in bed, only a few seconds from deep sleep, caught in a deadlock of impulses, unable to rise to the land of the living.
Then, in answer to a foreboding call from a dark part of his mind, he leaped from bed and landed on his bare feet in the middle of the room. His heart raced; his lips parted; his legs trembled. He struggled to come fully awake. He relaxed his taut muscles, feeling fear, remembering that he had killed Mary, had smothered her, had cut her head off and put her body in the fiery furnace.
This was Sunday morning and he had to take the trunk to the station. He glanced about and saw Mary’s shiny black purse lying atop his trousers on a chair. Good God! Though the air of the room was cold, beads of sweat broke onto his forehead and his breath stopped. Quickly, he looked round; his mother and sister were still sleeping. Buddy slept in the bed from which he had just arisen. Throw that purse away! Maybe he had forgotten other things? He searched the pockets of his trousers with nervous fingers and found the knife. He snapped it open and tiptoed to the window. Dried ridges of black blood were on the blade! He had to get rid of these at once. He put the knife into the purse and dressed hurriedly and silently. Throw the knife and purse into a garbage can. That’s it! He put on his coat and found stuffed in a pocket the pamphlets Jan had given him. Throw these away, too! Oh, but… Naw! He paused and gripped the pamphlets in his black fingers as his mind filled with a cunning idea. Jan had given him these pamphlets and he would keep them and show them to the police if he were ever questioned. That’s it! He would take them to his room at Dalton’s and put them in a dresser drawer. He would say that he had not even opened them and had not wanted to. He would say that he had taken them only because Jan had insisted. He shuffled the pamphlets softly, so that the paper would not rustle, and read the titles: Race Prejudice on Trial. The Negro Question in the United States. Black and White Unite and Fight. But that did not seem so dangerous. He looked at the bottom of a pamphlet and saw a black and white picture of a hammer and a curving knife. Below it he read a line that said: Issued by the Communist Party of the United States. Now, that did seem dangerous. He looked further and saw a pen-and-ink drawing of a white hand clasping a black hand