Native Son - Richard Wright [85]
He looked up and down the street, past ghostly lamps that shed a long series of faintly shimmering cones of yellow against the snowy night. He took her to the front entrance which gave into a vast pool of inky silence. He brought out the flashlight and focused the round spot on a rickety stairway leading upward into a still blacker darkness. The planks creaked as he led her up. Now and then he felt his shoes sink into a soft, cushy substance. Cobwebs brushed his face. All round him was the dank smell of rotting timber. He stopped abruptly as something with dry whispering feet flitted across his path, emitting as the rush of its flight died a thin, piping wail of lonely fear.
“Ooow!”
Bigger whirled and centered the spot of light on Bessie’s face. Her lips were drawn back, her mouth was open, and her hands were lifted midway to white-rimmed eyes.
“What you trying to do?” he asked. “Tell the whole world we in here?”
“Oh, Bigger!”
“Come on!”
After a few feet he stopped and swung the light. He saw dusty walls, walls almost like those of the Dalton home. The doorways were wider than those of any house in which he had ever lived. Some rich folks lived here once, he thought. Rich white folks. That was the way most houses on the South Side were, ornate, old, stinking; homes once of rich white people, now inhabited by Negroes or standing dark and empty with yawning black windows. He remembered that bombs had been thrown by whites into houses like these when Negroes had first moved into the South Side. He swept the disc of yellow and walked gingerly down a hall and into a room at the front of the house. It was feebly lit from the street lamps outside; he switched off the flashlight and looked round. The room had six large windows. By standing close to any of them, the streets in all four directions were visible.
“See, Bessie….”
He turned to look at her and found that she was not there. He called tensely:
“Bessie!”
There was no answer; he bounded to the doorway and switched on the flashlight. She was leaning against a wall, sobbing. He went to her, caught her arm and yanked her back into the room.
“Come on! You got to do better than this.”
“I’d rather have you kill me right now,” she sobbed.
“Don’t you say that again!”
She was silent. His black open palm swept upward in a swift narrow arc and smacked solidly against her face.
“You want me to wake you up?”
She bent her head to her knees; he caught hold of her arm again and dragged her to the window. He spoke like a man who had been running and was out of breath:
“Now, look. All you got to do is come here tomorrow night, see? Ain’t nothing going to bother you. I’m seeing to everything. Don’t you worry none. You just do what I say. You come here and just watch. About twelve o’clock a car’ll come along. It’ll be blinking its headlights, see? When it comes, you just raise this flashlight and blink it three times, see? Like this. Remember that. Then watch that car. It’ll throw out a package. Watch that package, ’cause the money’ll be in it. It’ll go into the snow. Look and see if anybody’s about. If you see nobody, then go and get the package and go home. But don’t go straight home. Make sure nobody’s watching you, nobody’s following you, see? Ride three or four street cars and transfer fast. Get off about five blocks from home and look behind you as you walk, see? Now, look. You can see up and down Michigan and Thirty-sixth. You can see if anybody’s watching. I’ll be in the white folks’ house all day tomorrow. If they put anybody out to watch, I’ll let you know not to come.”
“Bigger….”
“Come on, now.”
“Take me home.”
“You going to do it?”
She did not answer.
“You already in it,” he said. “You got part of the money.”
“I reckon it don’t make no difference,” she sighed.
“It’ll be easy.”
“It won’t. I’ll get caught. But it don’t make no difference. I’m lost anyhow. I was lost when I took up with you. I’m lost and it don’t matter….”
“Come on.”
He led her back to the car stop. He said nothing as they waited in the whirling snow. When he heard the car coming,