1WHILE wandering aimlessly about the streets of Memphis, gaping at the tall buildings and the crowds, killing time, eating bags of popcorn, I was struck by an odd and sudden idea. If I had attempted to work for an optical company in Jackson and had failed, why should I not try to work for an optical company in Memphis? Memphis was not a small town like Jackson; it was urban and I felt that no one would hold the trivial trouble I had had in Jackson against me.

2I looked for the address of a company in a directory and walked boldly into the building, rode up in the elevator with a fat, round, yellow Negro of about five feet in height. At the fifth floor I stepped into an office. A white man rose to meet me.

3“Pull off your hat,” he said.

4“Oh, yes, sir,” I said, jerking off my hat.

5“What do you want?”

6“I was wondering if you needed a boy,” I said. “I worked for an optical company for a short while in Jackson.”

7“Why did you leave?” he asked.

8“I had a little trouble there,” I said honestly.

9“Did you steal something?”

10“No, sir,” I said. “A white boy there didn’t want me to learn the optical trade and ran me off the job.”

11“Come and sit down.”

12I sat and recounted the story from beginning to end.

13“I’ll write Mr. Crane,” he said. “But you won’t get a chance to learn the optical trade here. That’s not our policy.”

14I told him that I understood and accepted his policy. I was hired at eight dollars per week and promised a raise of a dollar a week until my wages reached ten. Though this was less than I had been offered for the café job, I accepted it. I liked the open, honest way in which the man talked to me; and, too, the place seemed clean, brisk, businesslike.

15I was assigned to run errands and wash eyeglasses after they had come from the rouge-smeared machines. Each evening I had to take sacks of packages to the post office for mailing. It was light work and I was fast on my feet. At noon I would forgo my lunch hour and run errands for the white men who were employed in the shop. I would buy their lunches, take their suits out to have them pressed, pay their light, telephone, and gas bills, and deliver notes for them to their stenographer girl friends in near-by office buildings. The first day I made a dollar and a half in tips. I deposited the money I had left from my trip and resolved to live off my tips.

16I was now rapidly learning to contain the tension I felt in my relations with whites, and the people in Memphis had an air of relative urbanity that took some of the sharpness off the attitude of whites toward Negroes. There were about a dozen white men in the sixth-floor shop where I spent most of my time; they varied from Ku Klux Klanners to Jews, from theosophists to just plain poor whites. Although I could detect disdain and hatred in their attitudes, they never shouted at me or abused me. It was fairly easy to contemplate the race issue in the shop without reaching those heights of fear that devastated me. A measure of objectivity entered into my observations of white men and women. Either I could stand more mental strain than formerly or I had discovered deep within me ways of handling it.

17When I returned to Mrs. Moss’s that Monday night, she was surprised that I had changed my plans and had taken a new job. I showed her my bankbook and told her my plan for saving money and bringing my mother to Memphis. As I talked to her I tried to tell from her manner if Bess had said anything about what had happened between us, but Mrs. Moss was bland and motherly as always.

18Bess avoided me, refusing to speak when we were alone together; but when her mother was present, she was polite. A few days later Mrs. Moss came to me with a baffled look in her eyes.

19“What’s happened between you and Bess?” she asked.

20“Nothing,” I lied, burning with shame.

21“She don’t seem to like you no more,” she said. “I wanted you-all to kinda hit it off.” She looked at me searchingly. “Don’t you like her none?”

22I could not answer or look at her; I wondered if she had told Bess to give herself to me.

23“Well,” she drawled, sighing, “I guess folks just have to love each other naturally. You can’t make ’em.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Bess’ll find somebody.”

24I felt sick, filled with a consciousness of the woman’s helplessness, of her naïve hope. Time and again she told me that Bess loved me, wanted me. She even suggested that I “try Bess and see if you like her. Ain’t no harm in that.” And her words evoked in me a pity for her that had no name.

25Finally it became unbearable. One night I returned home from work and found Mrs. Moss sitting by the stove in the hall, nodding. She blinked her eyes and smiled.

26“How’re you, son?” she asked.

27“Pretty good,” I said.

28“Ain’t you and Bess got to be friends or something yet?”

29“No, ma’am,” I said softly.

30“How come you don’t like Bess?” she demanded.

31“Oh, I don’t know.” I was becoming angry.

32“It’s ’cause she ain’t so bright?”

33“No, ma’am. Bess’s bright,” I lied.

34“Then how come?”

35I still could not tell her.

36“You and Bess could have this house for your home,” she went on. “You-all could bring up your children here.”

37“But people have to find their own way to each other,” I said.

38“Young folks ain’t got no sense these days,” she said at last. “If somebody had fixed things for me when I was a gal, I sure would’ve taken it.”

39“Mrs. Moss,” I said, “I think I’d better move.”

40“Move then!” she exploded. “You ain’t got no sense!”

41I went to my room and began to pack. A knock came at the door. I opened it. Mrs. Moss stood in the doorway, weeping.

42“Son, forgive me,” she said. “I didn’t mean it. I wouldn’t hurt you for nothing. You just like a son to me.”

43“That’s all right,” I said. “But I’d better move.”

44“No!” she wailed. “Then you ain’t forgive me! When a body asks forgiveness, they means it!”

45I stared. Bess appeared in the doorway.

46“Don’t leave, Richard,” she said.

47“We won’t bother you no more,” Mrs. Moss said.

48I wilted, baffled, sorry, ashamed. Mrs. Moss took Bess’s hand and led her away.

49I centered my attention now upon making enough money to send for my mother and brother. I saved each penny I came by, stinting myself on food, walking to work, eating out of paper bags, living on a pint of milk and two sweet rolls for breakfast, a hamburger and peanuts for lunch, and a can of beans which I would eat at night in my room. I was used to hunger and I did not need much food to keep me alive.

50I now had more money than I had ever had before, and I began patronizing secondhand bookstores, buying magazines and books. In this way I became acquainted with periodicals like Harper’s Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, and the American Mercury. I would buy them for a few cents, read them, then resell them to the bookdealer.

51Once Mrs. Moss questioned me about my reading.

52“What you reading all them books for, boy?”

53“I just like to.”

54“You studying for law?”

55“No, ma’am.”

56“Well, I reckon you know what you doing,” she said.

57Though I did not have to report for work until nine o’clock each morning, I would arrive at eight and go into the lobby of the downstairs bank—where I knew the Negro porter—and read the early edition of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, thereby saving myself five cents each day, which I spent for lunch. After reading, I would watch the black porter perform his morning ritual: he would get a mop, bucket, soap flakes, water, then would pause dramatically, roll his eyes to the ceiling and sing out:

58“Lawd, today! Ahm still working for white folks!”

59And he would mop until he sweated. He hated his job and talked incessantly of leaving to work in the post office.

60The most colorful of the Negro boys on the job was Shorty, the round, yellow, fat elevator operator. He had tiny, beady eyes that looked out between rolls of flesh with a hard but humorous stare. He had the complexion of a Chinese, a short forehead, and three chins. Psychologically he was the most amazing specimen of the southern Negro I had ever met. Hardheaded, sensible, a reader of magazines and books, he was proud of his race and indignant about its wrongs. But in the presence of whites he would play the role of a clown of the most debased and degraded type.

61One day he needed twenty-five cents to buy his lunch.

62“Just watch me get a quarter from the first white man I see,” he told me as I stood in the elevator that morning.

63A white man who worked in the building stepped into the elevator and waited to be lifted to his floor. Shorty sang in a low mumble, smiling, rolling his eyes, looking at the white man roguishly.

64“I’m hungry, Mister White Man. I need a quarter for lunch.”

65The white man ignored him. Shorty, his hands on the controls of the elevator, sang again:

66“I ain’t gonna move this damned old elevator till I get a quarter, Mister White Man.”

67“The hell with you, Shorty,” the white man said, ignoring him and chewing on his black cigar.

68“I’m hungry, Mister White Man. I’m dying for a quarter,” Shorty sang, drooling, drawling, humming his words.

69“If you don’t take me to my floor, you will die,” the white man said, smiling a little for the first time.

70“But this black sonofabitch sure needs a quarter,” Shorty sang, grimacing, clowning, ignoring the white man’s threat.

71“Come on, you black bastard, I got to work,” the white man said, intrigued by the element of sadism involved, enjoying it.

72“It’ll cost you twenty-five cents, Mister White Man; just a quarter, just two bits,” Shorty moaned.

73There was silence. Shorty threw the lever and the elevator went up and stopped about five feet shy of the floor upon which the white man worked.

74“Can’t go no more, Mister White Man, unless I get my quarter,” he said in a tone that sounded like crying.

75“What would you do for a quarter?” the white man asked, still gazing off.

76“I’ll do anything for a quarter,” Shorty sang.

77“What, for example?” the white man asked.

78Shorty giggled, swung around, bent over, and poked out his broad, fleshy ass.

79“You can kick me for a quarter,” he sang, looking impishly at the white man out of the corners of his eyes.

80The white man laughed softly, jingled some coins in his pocket, took out one and thumped it to the floor. Shorty stooped to pick it up and the white man bared his teeth and swung his foot into Shorty’s rump with all the strength of his body. Shorty let out a howling laugh that echoed up and down the elevator shaft.

81“Now, open this door, you goddamn black sonofabitch,” the white man said, smiling with tight lips.

82“Yeeeess, siiiiir,” Shorty sang; but first he picked up the quarter and put it into his mouth. “This monkey’s got the peanuts,” he chortled.

83He opened the door and the white man stepped out and looked back at Shorty as he went toward his office.

84“You’re all right, Shorty, you sonofabitch,” he said.

85“I know it!” Shorty screamed, then let his voice trail off in a gale of wild laughter.

86I witnessed this scene or its variant at least a score of times and felt no anger or hatred, only disgust and loathing. Once I asked him:

87“How in God’s name can you do that?”

88“I needed a quarter and I got it,” he said soberly, proudly.

89“But a quarter can’t pay you for what he did to you,” I said.

90“Listen, nigger,” he said to me, “my ass is tough and quarters is scarce.”

91I never discussed the subject with him after that.

92Other Negroes worked in the building: an old man whom we called Edison; his son, John; and a night janitor who answered to the name of Dave. At noon, when I was not running errands, I would join the rest of the Negroes in a little room at the front of the building overlooking the street. Here, in this underworld pocket of the building, we munched our lunches and discussed the ways of white folks toward Negroes. When two or more of us were talking, it was impossible for this subject not to come up. Each of us hated and feared the whites, yet had a white man put in a sudden appearance we would have assumed silent, obedient smiles.

93To our minds the white folks formed a kind of superworld: what was said by them during working hours was rehashed and weighed here; how they looked; what they wore; what moods they were in; who had outdistanced whom in business; who was replacing whom on the job; who was getting fired and who was getting hired. But never once did we openly say that we occupied none but subordinate positions in the building. Our talk was restricted to the petty relations which formed the core of life for us.

94But under all our talk floated a latent sense of violence; the whites had drawn a line over which we dared not step and we accepted that line because our bread was at stake. But within our boundaries we, too, drew a line that included our right to bread regardless of the indignities or degradations involved in getting it. If a white man had sought to keep us from obtaining a job, or enjoying the rights of citizenship, we would have bowed silently to his power. But if he had sought to deprive us of a dime, blood might have been spilt. Hence, our daily lives were so bound up with trivial objectives that to capitulate when challenged was tantamount to surrendering the right to life itself. Our anger was like the anger of children, passing quickly from one petty grievance to another, from the memory of one slight wrong to another.

95“You know what the bastard Olin said to me this morning?” John would ask, biting into a juicy hamburger.

96“What?” Shorty would ask.

97“Well, I brought him his change from paying his gas bill and he said: ‘Put it here in my pocket; my hands are dirty,’” John said. “Hunh.... I just laid the money on the bench besides him. I ain’t no personal slave to him and I’ll be damned if I’ll put his own money in his own pocket.”

98“Hell, you’re right,” Shorty would say.

99“White folks just don’t think,” old man Edison would say.

100“You sure got to watch ’em,” Dave, the night janitor, would say. (He would have slept in the room on a cot after his night’s cleaning; he would be ready now to keep a date with some girl friend.)

101“Falk sent me to have his suit pressed,” I would say. “He didn’t give me a penny. Told me he would remember it on payday.”

102“Ain’t that some nerve?” John would say.

103“You can’t eat his memories,” Shorty would say.

104“But you got to keep on doing them favors,” old man Edison would say. “If you don’t, they won’t like you.”

105“I’m going north one of these days,” Shorty would say.

106We would all laugh, knowing that Shorty would never leave, that he depended too much upon the whites for the food he ate.

107“What would you do up north?” I would ask Shorty.

108“I’d pass for Chinese,” Shorty would say.

109And we would laugh again. The lunch hour would pass and we would go back to work, but there would be in our faces not one whit of the sentiment we had felt during the hour of discussion.

110One day I went to the optical counter of a department store to deliver a pair of eyeglasses. The counter was empty of customers and a tall, florid-faced white man looked at me curiously. He was unmistakably a Yankee, for his physical build differed sharply from that of the lanky Southerner.

111“Will you please sign for this, sir?” I asked, presenting the account book and the eyeglasses.

112He picked up the book and the glasses, but his eyes were still upon me.

113“Say, boy, I’m from the North,” he said quietly.

114I held very still. Was this a trap? He had mentioned a tabooed subject and I wanted to wait until I knew what he meant. Among the topics that southern white men did not like to discuss with Negroes were the following: American white women; the Ku Klux Klan; France, and how Negro soldiers fared while there; Frenchwomen; Jack Johnson; the entire northern part of the United States; the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln; U. S. Grant; General Sherman; Catholics; the Pope; Jews; the Republican party; slavery; social equality; Communism; Socialism; the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution; or any topic calling for positive knowledge or manly self-assertion on the part of the Negro. The most accepted topics were sex and religion. I did not look at the man or answer. With one sentence he had lifted out of the silent dark the race question and I stood on the edge of a precipice.

115“Don’t be afraid of me,” he went on. “I just want to ask you one question.”

116“Yes, sir,” I said in a waiting, neutral tone.

117“Tell me, boy, are you hungry?” he asked seriously.

118I stared at him. He had spoken one word that touched the very soul of me, but I could not talk to him, could not let him know that I was starving myself to save money to go north. I did not trust him. But my face did not change its expression.

119“Oh, no, sir,” I said, managing a smile.

120I was hungry and he knew it; but he was a white man and I felt that if I told him I was hungry I would have been revealing something shameful.

121“Boy, I can see hunger in your face and eyes,” he said.

122“I get enough to eat,” I lied.

123“Then why do you keep so thin?” he asked me.

124“Well, I suppose I’m just that way, naturally,” I lied.

125“You’re just scared, boy,” he said.

126“Oh, no, sir,” I lied again.

127I could not look at him. I wanted to leave the counter, yet he was a white man and I had learned not to walk abruptly away from a white man when he was talking to me. I stood, my eyes looking away. He ran his hand into his pocket and pulled out a dollar bill.

128“Here, take this dollar and buy yourself some food,” he said.

129“No, sir,” I said.

130“Don’t be a fool,” he said. “You’re ashamed to take it. God, boy, don’t let a thing like that stop you from taking a dollar and eating.”

131The more he talked the more it became impossible for me to take the dollar. I wanted it, but I could not look at it. I wanted to speak, but I could not move my tongue. I wanted him to leave me alone. He frightened me.

132“Say something,” he said.

133All about us in the store were piles of goods; white men and women went from counter to counter. It was summer and from a high ceiling was suspended a huge electric fan that whirred. I stood waiting for the white man to give me the signal that would let me go.

134“I don’t understand it,” he said through his teeth. “How far did you go in school?”

135“Through the ninth grade, but it was really the eighth,” I told him. “You see, our studies in the ninth grade were more or less a review of what we had in the eighth grade.”

136Silence. He had not asked me for this long explanation, but I had spoken at length to fill up the yawning, shameful gap that loomed between us; I had spoken to try to drag the unreal nature of the conversation back to safe and sound southern ground. Of course, the conversation was real; it dealt with my welfare, but it had brought to the surface of day all the dark fears I had known all my life. The Yankee white man did not know how dangerous his words were.

137(There are some elusive, profound, recondite things that men find hard to say to other men; but with the Negro it is the little things of life that become hard to say, for these tiny items shape his destiny. A man will seek to express his relation to the stars; but when a man’s consciousness has been riveted upon obtaining a loaf of bread, that loaf of bread is as important as the stars.)

138Another white man walked up to the counter and I sighed with relief.

139“Do you want the dollar?” the man asked.

140“No, sir,” I whispered.

141“All right,” he said. “Just forget it.”

142He signed the account book and took the eyeglasses. I stuffed the book into my bag and turned from the counter and walked down the aisle, feeling a physical tingling along my spine, knowing that the white man knew I was really hungry. I avoided him after that. Whenever I saw him I felt in a queer way that he was my enemy, for he knew how I felt and the safety of my life in the South depended upon how well I concealed from all whites what I felt.

143One summer morning I stood at a sink in the rear of the factory washing a pair of eyeglasses that had just come from the polishing machines whose throbbing shook the floor upon which I stood. At each machine a white man was bent forward, working intently. To my left sunshine poured through a window, lighting up the rouge smears and making the factory look garish, violent, dangerous. It was nearing noon and my mind was drifting toward my daily lunch of a hamburger and a bag of peanuts. It had been a routine day, a day more or less like the other days I had spent on the job as errand boy and washer of eyeglasses. I was at peace with the world, that is, at peace in the only way in which a black boy in the South can be at peace with a world of white men.

144Perhaps it was the mere sameness of the day that soon made it different from the other days; maybe the white men who operated the machines felt bored with their dull, automatic tasks and hankered for some kind of excitement. Anyway, I presently heard footsteps behind me and turned my head. At my elbow stood a young white man, Mr. Olin, the immediate foreman under whom I worked. He was smiling and observing me as I cleaned emery dust from the eyeglasses.

145“Boy, how’s it going?” he asked.

146“Oh, fine, sir!” I answered with false heartiness, falling quickly into that nigger-being-a-good-natured-boy-in-the-presence-of-a-white-man pattern, a pattern into which I could now slide easily; although I was wondering if he had any criticism to make of my work.

147He continued to hover wordlessly at my side. What did he want? It was unusual for him to stand there and watch me; I wanted to look at him, but was afraid to.

148“Say, Richard, do you believe that I’m your friend?” he asked me.

149The question was so loaded with danger that I could not reply at once. I scarcely knew Mr. Olin. My relationship to him had been the typical relationship of Negroes to southern whites. He gave me orders and I said, “Yes, sir,” and obeyed them. Now, without warning, he was asking me if I thought that he was my friend; and I knew that all southern white men fancied themselves as friends of niggers. While fishing for an answer that would say nothing, I smiled.

150“I mean,” he persisted, “do you think I’m your friend?”

151“Well,” I answered, skirting the vast racial chasm between us, “I hope you are.”

152“I am,” he said emphatically.

153I continued to work, wondering what motives were prompting him. Already apprehension was rising in me.

154“I want to tell you something,” he said.

155“Yes, sir,” I said.

156“We don’t want you to get hurt,” he explained. “We like you round here. You act like a good boy.”

157“Yes, sir,” I said. “What is wrong?”

158“You don’t deserve to get into trouble,” he went on.

159“Have I done something that somebody doesn’t like?” I asked, my mind frantically sweeping over all my past actions, weighing them in the light of the way southern white men thought Negroes should act.

160“Well, I don’t know,” he said and paused, letting his words sink meaningfully into my mind. He lit a cigarette. “Do you know Harrison?”

161He was referring to a Negro boy of about my own age who worked across the street for a rival optical house. Harrison and I knew each other casually, but there had never been the slightest trouble between us.

162“Yes, sir,” I said. “I know him.”

163“Well, be careful,” Mr. Olin said. “He’s after you.”

164“After me? For what?”

165“He’s got a terrific grudge against you,” the white man explained. “What have you done to him?”

166The eyeglasses I was washing were forgotten. My eyes were upon Mr. Olin’s face, trying to make out what he meant. Was this something serious? I did not trust the white man, and neither did I trust Harrison. Negroes who worked on jobs in the South were usually loyal to their white bosses; they felt that that was the best way to ensure their jobs. Had Harrison felt that I had in some way jeopardized his job? Who was my friend: the white man or the black boy?

167“I haven’t done anything to Harrison,” I said.

168“Well, you better watch that nigger Harrison,” Mr. Olin said in a low, confidential tone. “A little while ago I went down to get a Coca-Cola and Harrison was waiting for you at the door of the building with a knife. He asked me when you were coming down. Said he was going to get you. Said you called him a dirty name. Now, we don’t want any fighting or bloodshed on the job.”

169I still doubted the white man, yet thought that perhaps Harrison had really interpreted something I had said as an insult.

170“I’ve got to see that boy and talk to him,” I said, thinking out loud.

171“No, you’d better not,” Mr. Olin said. “You’d better let some of us white boys talk to him.”

172“But how did this start?” I asked, still doubting but half believing.

173“He just told me that he was going to get even with you, going to cut you and teach you a lesson,” he said. “But don’t you worry. Let me handle this.”

174He patted my shoulder and went back to his machine. He was an important man in the factory and I had always respected his word. He had the authority to order me to do this or that. Now, why would he joke with me? White men did not often joke with Negroes, therefore what he had said was serious. I was upset. We black boys worked long hard hours for what few pennies we earned and we were edgy and tense. Perhaps that crazy Harrison was really after me. My appetite was gone. I had to settle this thing. A white man had walked into my delicately balanced world and had tipped it and I had to right it before I could feel safe. Yes, I would go directly to Harrison and ask what was the matter, what I had said that he resented. Harrison was black and so was I; I would ignore the warning of the white man and talk face to face with a boy of my own color.

175At noon I went across the street and found Harrison sitting on a box in the basement. He was eating lunch and reading a pulp magazine. As I approached him, he ran his hand into his pocket and looked at me with cold, watchful eyes.

176“Say, Harrison, what’s this all about?” I asked, standing cautiously four feet from him.

177He looked at me a long time and did not answer.

178“I haven’t done anything to you,” I said.

179“And I ain’t got nothing against you,” he mumbled, still watchful. “I don’t bother nobody.”

180“But Mr. Olin said that you came over to the factory this morning, looking for me with a knife.”

181“Aw, naw,” he said, more at ease now. “I ain’t been in your factory all day.” He had not looked at me as he spoke.

182“Then what did Mr. Olin mean?” I asked. “I’m not angry with you.”

183“Shucks, I thought you was looking for me to cut me,” Harrison explained. “Mr. Olin, he came over here this morning and said you was going to kill me with a knife the moment you saw me. He said you was mad at me because I had insulted you. But I ain’t said nothing about you.” He still had not looked at me. He rose.

184“And I haven’t said anything about you,” I said.

185Finally he looked at me and I felt better. We two black boys, each working for ten dollars a week, stood staring at each other, thinking, comparing the motives of the absent white man, each asking himself if he could believe the other.

186“But why would Mr. Olin tell me things like that?” I asked.

187Harrison dropped his head; he laid his sandwich aside.

188“I... I....” he stammered and pulled from his pocket a long, gleaming knife; it was already open. “I was just waiting to see what you was gonna do to me....”

189I leaned weakly against a wall, feeling sick, my eyes upon the sharp steel blade of the knife.

190“You were going to cut me?” I asked.

191“If you had cut me, I was gonna cut you first,” he said. “I ain’t taking no chances.”

192“Are you angry with me about something?” I asked.

193“Man, I ain’t mad at nobody,” Harrison said uneasily.

194I felt how close I had come to being slashed. Had I come suddenly upon Harrison, he would have thought I was trying to kill him and he would have stabbed me, perhaps killed me. And what did it matter if one nigger killed another?

195“Look here,” I said. “Don’t believe what Mr. Olin says.”

196“I see now,” Harrison said. “He’s playing a dirty trick on us.”

197“He’s trying to make us kill each other for nothing.”

198“How come he wanna do that?” Harrison asked.

199I shook my head. Harrison sat, but still played with the open knife. I began to doubt. Was he really angry with me? Was he waiting until I turned my back to stab me? I was in torture.

200“I suppose it’s fun for white men to see niggers fight,” I said, forcing a laugh.

201“But you might’ve killed me,” Harrison said.

202“To white men we’re like dogs or cocks,” I said.

203“I don’t want to cut you,” Harrison said.

204“And I don’t want to cut you,” I said.

205Standing well out of each other’s reach, we discussed the problem and decided that we would keep silent about our conference. We would not let Mr. Olin know that we knew that he was egging us to fight. We agreed to ignore any further provocations. At one o’clock I went back to the factory. Mr. Olin was waiting for me, his manner grave, his face serious.

206“Did you see that Harrison nigger?” he asked.

207“No, sir,” I lied.

208“Well, he still has that knife for you,” he said.

209Hate tightened in me. But I kept a dead face.

210“Did you buy a knife yet?” he asked me.

211“No, sir,” I answered.

212“Do you want to use mine?” he asked. “You’ve got to protect yourself, you know.”

213“No, sir. I’m not afraid,” I said.

214“Nigger, you’re a fool,” he spluttered. “I thought you had some sense! Are you going to just let that nigger cut your heart out? His boss gave him a knife to use against you! Take this knife, nigger, and stop acting crazy!”

215I was afraid to look at him; if I had looked at him I would have had to tell him to leave me alone, that I knew he was lying, that I knew he was no friend of mine, that I knew if anyone had thrust a knife through my heart he would simply have laughed. But I said nothing. He was the boss and he could fire me if he did not like me. He laid an open knife on the edge of his workbench, about a foot from my hand. I had a fleeting urge to pick it up and give it to him, point first into his chest. But I did nothing of the kind. I picked up the knife and put it into my pocket.

216“Now, you’re acting like a nigger with some sense,” he said.

217As I worked Mr. Olin watched me from his machine. Later when I passed him he called me.

218“Now, look here, boy,” he began. “We told that Harrison nigger to stay out of this building and leave you alone, see? But I can’t protect you when you go home. If that nigger starts at you when you are on your way home, you stab him before he gets a chance to stab you, see?”

219I avoided looking at him and remained silent.

220“Suit yourself, nigger,” Mr. Olin said. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

221I had to make my round of errands to deliver eyeglasses and I stole a few minutes to run across the street to talk to Harrison. Harrison was sullen and bashful, wanting to trust me, but afraid. He told me that Mr. Olin had telephoned his boss and had told him to tell Harrison that I had planned to wait for him at the back entrance of the building at six o’clock and stab him. Harrison and I found it difficult to look at each other; we were upset and distrustful; We were not really angry at each other; we knew that the idea of murder had been planted in each of us by the white men who employed us. We told ourselves again and again that we did not agree with the white men; we urged ourselves to keep faith in each other. Yet there lingered deep down in each of us a suspicion that maybe one of us was trying to kill the other.

222“I’m not angry with you, Harrison,” I said.

223“I don’t wanna fight nobody,” Harrison said bashfully, but he kept his hand in his pocket on his knife.

224Each of us felt the same shame, felt how foolish and weak we were in the face of the domination of the whites.

225“I wish they’d leave us alone,” I said.

226“Me too,” Harrison said.

227“There are a million black boys like us to run errands,” I said. “They wouldn’t care if we killed each other.”

228“I know it,” Harrison said.

229Was he acting? I could not believe in him. We were toying with the idea of death for no reason that stemmed from our own lives, but because the men who ruled us had thrust the idea into our minds. Each of us depended upon the whites for the bread we ate, and we actually trusted the whites more than we did each other. Yet there existed in us a longing to trust men of our own color. Again Harrison and I parted, vowing not to be influenced by what our white boss men said to us.

230The game of egging Harrison and me to fight, to cut each other, kept up for a week. We were afraid to tell the white men that we did not believe them, for that would have been tantamount to calling them liars or risking an argument that might have ended in violence being directed against us.

231One morning a few days later Mr. Olin and a group of white men came to me and asked me if I was willing to settle my grudge with Harrison with gloves, according to boxing rules. I told them that, though I was not afraid of Harrison, I did not want to fight him and that I did not know how to box. I could feel now that they knew I no longer believed them.

232When I left the factory that evening, Harrison yelled at me from down the block. I waited and he ran toward me. Did he want to cut me? I backed away as he approached. We smiled uneasily and sheepishly at each other. We spoke haltingly, weighing our words.

233“Did they ask you to fight me with gloves?” Harrison asked.

234“Yes,” I told him. “But I didn’t agree.”

235Harrison’s face became eager.

236“They want us to fight four rounds for five dollars apiece,” he said. “Man, if I had five dollars, I could pay down on a suit. Five dollars is almost half a week’s wages for me.”

237“I don’t want to,” I said.

238“We won’t hurt each other,” he said.

239“But why do a thing like that for white men?”

240“To get that five dollars.”

241“I don’t need five dollars that much.”

242“Aw, you’re a fool,” he said. Then he smiled quickly.

243“Now, look here,” I said. “Maybe you are angry with me....”

244“Naw, I’m not.” He shook his head vigorously.

245“I don’t want to fight for white men. I’m no dog or rooster.”

246I was watching Harrison closely and he was watching me closely. Did he really want to fight me for some reason of his own? Or was it the money? Harrison stared at me with puzzled eyes. He stepped toward me and I stepped away. He smiled nervously.

247“I need that money,” he said.

248“Nothing doing,” I said.

249He walked off wordlessly, with an air of anger. Maybe he will stab me now, I thought. I got to watch that fool....

250For another week the white men of both factories begged us to fight. They made up stories about what Harrison had said about me; and when they saw Harrison they lied to him in the same way. Harrison and I were wary of each other whenever we met. We smiled and kept out of arm’s reach, ashamed of ourselves and of each other.

251Again Harrison called to me one evening as I was on my way home.

252“Come on and fight,” he begged.

253“I don’t want to and quit asking me,” I said in a voice louder and harder than I had intended.

254Harrison looked at me and I watched him. Both of us still carried the knives that the white men had given us.

255“I wanna make a payment on a suit of clothes with that five dollars,” Harrison said.