'All I want is to be able-' I began, but she cut me off.
'Let me put it another way. Will the fact that you are a Negro deter you from attempting to succeed as white men do?' I started to interrupt, but she stopped me. 'No, Bob, this is important. Your present attitude has no place for me in your life, it has no place for anyone except yourself. When you lost your temper with the girl you were not thinking about me.'
'I suppose I should have just said, 'Yes ma'am, I'm a nigger,' and let it go at that.'
She went over and sat down again. 'It's not just you any more, Bob,' she said. 'I have to think about myself. If we're going to be married you will have to begin thinking about the future- our future-'
She got me then. 'Look, baby, I'm going to make the grade,' I told her. 'Next fall I'm going back to college like you want, but right now-'
'But it's more than that Bob,' she cut in. 'I've been trying to tell you. I'll have to have confidence in you. I'll have to believe that you will make good, and I just can't see you doing it unless you learn how to get along with the white people with whom you have to work.'
I felt myself getting tight inside; the bands started clamping on my head again and the rocks started growing in my chest.
'Will you go to the girl tomorrow morning and apologize?' she asked. 'I think father knows the president of Atlas Corporation. Will you-'
'No,' I said.
'But it's not just you now, Bob,' she said. She was pleading now. 'It's you and I now, Bob. Don't you understand? In the things you do and the decisions you make you just can't think of yourself alone. You have to consider our future. Is that too much to ask?'
'But you don't understand either,' I began. 'I just can't take it and keep on living with myself. I simply can't-'
'Bob,' she said. 'I'm not going to plead with you any more. If you don't go to that girl and apologize and try in every way you know to get reinstated-'
'Look, baby-' I cut in again; I was trying to stop her; I didn't want her to say it. 'Look, Alice, will you listen to me? Will you let me tell you what'll happen to me if I do that? That's what I've wanted to talk about all night-'
'No, Bob, I won't listen,' she said. 'It's such a little thing. If you can't do that much, Bob, don't consider me as being with you any more.' She paused, then added, 'We have to walk together-don't you understand?'
'Okay,' I said, turning toward the door. I felt crushed inside, as if a car had run over me and left me lying there. I hadn't wanted her to say it before I'd had a chance to tell her that I didn't have a choice.
CHAPTER XII
I went home and went to bed and dreamed Alice and I were in a drugstore and when I got ready to leave I started toward the door with two packages in my hand and then I couldn't find Alice. I went around holding the two packages looking for Alice and finally found her in a hall off from the prescription room talking to the proprietor's wife who had her two hands on Alice's shoulder. I thought something funny was going on and got mad and said, 'I was looking for you.' She looked at me as if she was surprised and said, 'I thought we had a date with these people,' and I said, 'Naw, we ain't got no date,' and yanked her by the arm and pulled her out into the store and then I thought about the packages in my hand and looked down and saw that I had a half a dozen or so grapefruit wrapped in a grey vest and a. 45-calibre short-barrelled revolver. I went back into the hall and put the grapefruit on a table and then I stood there and tried to put the gun in a holster I had strapped around my chest, but when I got the gun in the holster the butt end of the holster stuck out so it showed under my overcoat and I had to open my trousers and stick the end of the holster down in my trousers but still it showed when I buttoned my coat so I held my coat with my left elbow pressed against the holster to keep it from showing and went to look for Alice but she had gone outside again. I went outside and saw her up on the other side of the street about half a block ahead. Off to her right was a weedy park that slanted down to a river and when I crossed the street I saw Alice turn into the park and I hurried to catch up with her. But before I got in sight of her she began screaming for help and I fumbled with the holster until I got the gun out in my hand and ran down the sidewalk, looking into the park for her, but the park was hilly and rocky and covered with a dense growth of scrub and I couldn't see Alice. I ran ahead to a break in the brush and turned right up a hill and saw millions of swine with bony sharp spines and long yellow tusks running about in the brush and I shot at one right in front of me and I could see the hole pop in his side where the bullet went through. Then I heard Alice screaming again, horribly as if she was being torn apart, and I ran up the hill toward the sound of her voice as fast as I could, my overcoat holding me back, and my heart beating with fear. When I came to the top I saw a dry sandy wash and I started looking about in the wash for her. A woman leaning on a fence at the top of the wash said, 'There,' and I looked in a clump of bushes and saw what at first looked like a little rag doll, but when I turned it over I saw it was Alice. Her head and shoulders were the same but her eyes were closed and her body had shrunk until it was no more than a foot long and she was dead. I felt shocked and scared and all torn up inside and then I looked up for the woman who was leaning on the fence but instead of one woman there were millions of white women leaning there, looking at me, giving me the most sympathetic smiles I ever saw.
I woke up overcome with a feeling of absolute impotence; I laid there remembering the dream in every detail. Memory of my fight with Alice came back, and then I saw Madge's kidneyshaped mouth, brutal at the edges, spitting out the word 'Nigger'; and something took a heavy hammer and nailed me to the bed.
I was scared to think about my gang; I started drawing in my emotions, tying them, whittling them off, nailing them down. I was so tight inside, I was like wood. My breath wouldn't go any deeper than my throat and I didn't know whether I could talk at all. I had to get ready to die before I could get out of the house.
When I picked up Homer and Conway they didn't say anything; they just looked at me out of the sides of their eyes. Then I stopped for Pigmeat, Smitty, and Johnson, and they had their usual morning squabble.
Finally Smitty asked, 'Where was you yesditty, Bob?'
I had to think about it before I answered. 'I was off,' I said.
Pigmeat turned to Smitty and said, 'Now that's that man's own business. S'pose he tell you he was with you mama.'
'I don't play no dozens, boy,' Smitty growled. 'You young punks don't know how far to go with a man.'
I went out Central trying my brakes, timing my stops so thin and my turns so tight that if any chump in front of me had dug to a sudden stop I'd have climbed up on him.
Conway leaned across Homer and said, 'What's the matter, chief? You look down in the mouth this morning. You old lady quit you?'
I felt fragile as overheated glass; one rough touch and I'd burst into a thousand pieces. 'Could happen,' I said in a thin shallow voice out of the top of my mouth.
'Bob's got his own troubles, nigger, why don't you worry 'bout yours?' Pigmeat said.
Conway turned around and gave him a dirty look. 'You getting too big for yo' britches,' he said.
A big air-brake Diesel gripped the ground in front and I almost went inside of it. I braked so short I scrambled my riders.
Homer rubbed his head where he'd butted into the windshield and said, 'Bob sho ain't got his mind on driving this morning.'
'What Bob got his mind on this morning would get yo' black ass hung where you come from,' Johnson said.
'Where who come from?'
'You, nigger, I s'pose you from Alaska.'
'Now Bob ain't said a word,' Smitty said. 'If he was to cuss you somoleons out and put you out his car you'd say he was a bad fellow.'
Conway got it out in the open. 'Say, chief, what's that grey boy doing in yo' job? He say he taking your place. You ain't gonna quit us, chief?'
That silenced them; they knew the story, but they all waited to hear what I had to say.
'I had to get a cracker chick told yesterday-or rather, day before yesterday-and Mac demoted me,' I
