The Outsider

by Richard Wright

  He leaned back and wondered why his life had been spared. Or had it been? To say that he had been “spared” implied that some God was watching over him, and he did not believe that. It was simply the way the dice had rolled. He stretched out his right leg, testing it; the flesh was still sore to the touch, but he could keep on his feet. Funny, that morning he had been ready to blow his brains out, but when his body had been tossed about in that darkness, he had wanted to live.

  His postal badge! The loan papers! They too were in the pocket of his overcoat. He’d have to report their being lost the first thing in the morning to the postal officials…The taxi swerved to a curb at 47th and South Park. He paid the driver, limped out, walked through tumbling snowflakes and entered Dug’s, a small restaurant that served the kind of food he liked. He went into the men’s room, washed himself and then examined his face in the mirror. Not bad…He looked as though he had been on a two-day drunk, that was all. He grinned, reentered the restaurant which was almost empty and ordered a steak, fried potatoes, coffee, and ice cream. He took a sip of water, listening to the radio that was going near the front window.

  …This is John Harlan speaking. I’m broadcasting from the scene of the subway wreck at Roosevelt Road. It is snowing here and the visibility is rather bad. I have my microphone with me upon the “L” platform and I’m able to see directly down to the subway entrance where doctors, nurses, attendants, and policemen are working frantically to bring the wounded from the underground. The scene is being illuminated by huge spotlights attached to telephone poles. Beyond the subway entrance, stretching far into the street and blocking the traffic, is a crowd of more than five thousand people standing silently in the falling snow. They have been here for almost an hour waiting for news of friends or relatives believed to have been passengers on the ill-fated subway trains that collided with a heavy loss of life more than an hour ago…

  I see the internes bringing out another victim. A body is on the stretcher. It is the body of a woman, it seems; yes, I can see her long brown hair…Wait a minute. I’ll see if I can get the police to identify her for us.

  So engrossed was Cross in listening that he did not see the waitress when she placed his food before him. They’re acting like it’s a baseball game, he thought with astonishment. He was glad now that he had walked so unceremoniously away from the accident. He surely would not have wanted anybody to blare out his name over the airways as a victim. He shrugged his shoulders. They’ll give us a commercial soon, he thought. The radio commentator resumed:

  The name of the last accident victim is: Mrs. Maybelle Broadman of 68 Green Street, Ravenswood Park. She is being taken directly to the Michael Reese Hospital…

  Ladies and gentlemen, I see the internes coming out with another stretcher. I can’t tell yet if the victim is a man or a woman, for the stretcher is completely covered. It’s a man…I can tell by the blood-stained overcoat which is draped over the foot of the stretcher…That is the forty-fourth victim taken so far from the wreckage of underground trains. Just a minute; I’ll try to get the identity of the last victim who was brought out…

  In spite of himself, his interest was captured by the description of the happenings at the scene of the accident. As he waited for more news, he chewed and swallowed a mouthful of steak and lifted his cup of coffee to his lips.

  Ladies and gentlemen, while we are endeavoring to establish the identity of the last man taken from the scene of the subway accident at Roosevelt Road, I’m going to ask one of the eyewitnesses, who was a passenger on the subway train, to say a few words about what he saw and felt when the disaster occurred. I have here at my side Mr. Glenn Williams, a salesman of 136 Rush Street, who escaped with but a few minor bruises. Mr. Williams, could you tell us what happened? Where were you on the train…?

  WELL, I WAS IN A COACH TOWARD THE MIDDLE OF THE TRAIN. EVERYTHING SEEMED TO BE GOING ALL RIGHT. I WAS READING THE EVENING PAPER. THE TRAIN WAS FULL. I WAS SEATED. I GUESS WE WERE ABOUT A MINUTE FROM THE ROOSEVELT ROAD STATION, WHERE I WAS TO GET OFF, WHEN A GREAT CRASH CAME AND ALL THE LIGHTS WENT OFF. I FELT MYSELF BEING KNOCKED OFF MY SEAT…

  I must interrupt you, Mr. Williams. I’m sorry. Ladies and gentlemen, the police have just informed me of the identity of the last victim taken from the subway crash at Roosevelt Road. His name is Cross Damon, a 26-year-old postal clerk who lived at 244 East 57th Street on the South Side. Mr. Damon’s body was crushed and mangled beyond recognition or hope of direct identification. His identity has been established, however, by his overcoat, private papers, and his post office badge…His body is being taken directly to the Cook County Morgue. Relatives must address all inquiries there…

  Now, Mr. Williams, will you kindly…?

  Cross was still holding the cup of coffee in his right hand, his fingers tense upon the handle. He stared, stupefied. What? He half stood, then sat down again. Good God! He…dead? He had a wild impulse to laugh. The damn fools! They were really crazy! Well, it was his overcoat that had led them wrong… Yes, that was it. He ought to phone them right now! He looked around the restaurant; except for himself, the place was now empty of customers. That tall, black girl who had been eating in the corner had gone…Dug, the proprietor who knew him, was not there. The waitress was a new one and he did not know her and she did not know him. He saw her watching him curiously. She must think I’m loony, he thought.

  “Is there anything wrong, sir?”

  He did not answer. This was rich! He was dead! He had to tell this to the gang at THE SALTY DOG, right now! Old Doc Huggins would die laughing…

  “Is the food all right, sir?”

  “Hunh? Oh, yes. Look, what do I owe you?”

  “Aren’t you going to eat?”

  “No. I’ve forgotten something. I got to go at once…”

  “Well, sir. It’s one seventy-five. You see, even if you don’t eat, they had to prepare it. We can’t serve that food to anybody else, sir, you know. So you’ll have to pay…”

  “That’s all right. Here,” he said, tossing her two one-dollar bills.

  He hurried out into the spinning snow and headed for THE SALTY DOG. This was the damndest thing! It was even more freakish than his having escaped alive from the subway accident itself. When he reached the corner, some force jerked his body to an abrupt halt amidst the jumping snow. He was stunned and shaken by the power of an idea that took his breath away and left him standing open-mouthed like an idiot amid the crazy flakes.

  He was dead…All right…Okay…Why the hell not? Why should he refute it? Why should he deny it? He, of all the people on earth, had a million reasons for being dead and staying dead! An intuitive sense of freedom flashed through his mind. Was there a slight chance here of his being able to start all over again? To live a new life? It would solve every problem he had if the world and all the people who knew him could think of him as dead…He felt dizzy as he tried to encompass the totality of the idea that had come so suddenly and unsought into his mind, for its implications ramified in so many directions that he could not grasp them all at once. Was it possible that he could somehow make this false account of his death become real? Could he pull off a thing like that? What did one do in a case like this? These questions made him feel that the world about him held countless dangers; he suddenly felt like a criminal, and he was grateful for the nervous flakes of snow which screened his face from the eyes of passersby. Oh, God…He had to sit down somewhere alone and think this thing out; it was too new, too odd, too complicated. How could he let them go on believing that he was dead? But suppose later they found out that the body that they had dragged from the wreckage was not his? What then? Well, could he not hide away for a few days until they had made up their minds? If they buried that body as the body of Cross Damon, then he was dead, really, legally, morally dead. Had any of his friends seen him since he had come up out of the subway? No, not one. And no one had known him at the subway station. No doubt that doctor and those nurses had already, in their excitement, forgott
en that they had ever seen him. He was certain that no one he knew had seen him in that dingy bar on Roosevelt Road. And if he was really serious about this, then he ought not go into THE SALTY DOG. What wild luck! And Dug had not been in! And that waitress was new and could not have known him from Adam…!

  Then, if he was to do this thing, no one who knew him must see him now…From this moment on he had to vanish…Hide…Now! And his mother must not see him…And Dot must not see him…Gladys must be led to believe that he was dead…His sons…? Good God…Doing this meant leaving them forever! Did he want to do that? He had to make up his mind…Well, they were not close to him as it was; so leaving them was merely making final and formal what had already happened. And how was Gladys to live? Ah, she’d get his insurance money, ten thousand dollars! His cheeks felt hot. Gladys would be taken care of. And no doubt his old mother would now swallow her pride and go and live with Gladys. And the stern logic of Dot’s position would force her to have the child aborted…He trembled, looking about him in the snow-scattered street, his eyes smouldering with excitement. A keen sensation of vitality invaded every cell of his body and a slow, strange smile stole across his lips. It was as though he was living out a daring dream. If, after hiding away for a few days, they discovered that that body was not his, why, he could always come forth and say that the accident had wounded him in such a way that he had temporarily lost his memory! That would be his alibi…And were not such claims being made every day? He had often read of cases of amnesia…It might work. Why not? It was surely worth trying. What had he to lose? His job. It was already compromised by Dot’s possible accusations against him. And only tonight he had signed an obligation to pay a debt that would take him two years to discharge…And if he were dead, all of that would be at an end!

  All right; what next? He could not plot or plan this by talking it over with anybody. He would have to sit down alone and figure this thing out carefully. And he had to keep shy of those sections of the city where he might meet people who knew him. Where could he go? Yes, down around 22nd Street, the area of the bums and whores and sporting houses…And he had eight hundred dollars in cash in his shirt next to his skin! Holy Moses! It all made sense! This eight hundred dollars would be his stake until he could launch himself anew somewhere else…It all fitted…He would be a damn fool if he did not try it. All of his life he had been hankering after his personal freedom, and now freedom was knocking at his door, begging him to come out. He shivered in the cold. Yes, he had to go to his room and get his clothes…But, no…Someone would surely see him. He could not take that chance. Funny, it was hard to think straight about this. He had to break right now the chains of habit that bound him to the present. And that was not easy. Each act of his consciousness sought to drag him back to what he wanted to flee.

  He had to act, NOW! Each second he stood here like this made it more dangerous for him to do what he wanted. Yet he remained standing as though some power over which he had no control held him rooted. His judgment told him to move on, and yet he stood. Already he felt like the hunted. Waves of realization rolled through him: he had to break with everything he had ever known and create a new life. Could he do it? If he could conceive of it, he should be able to do it. This thing suited his personality, his leanings. Yes, take a taxi to 22nd Street…No, the driver might remember him; the South Side was a small place. The subway…? No, he might meet another postal clerk. He would walk over to State Street and take a trolley northward to 22nd Street. He was not likely to meet anybody in that direction.

  At last he moved through the shaking flakes of snow. If it did not work, he could explain it all away. But, by God, it had to work. It was up to him to make it work. He was walking fast, caught up in a sense of drama, trying to work out a new destiny.

  He recalled now the other Negro passenger on the train who had sat across the aisle opposite him; the man had been about his own general build, size, and color. What had happened was simple; they had mistaken that man’s body for his own! The body had been so disfigured that direct identification had been impossible, and, when they had found his overcoat with his postal badge and the contract papers in the pocket, they had leaped to the conclusion that it was the body of Cross Damon. Would anyone demand that that body be subjected to further examination to determine if it was really his? The insurance company? But why would they do that unless somebody put the idea in their heads? Would Gladys? Hell, no…She would be content to get the ten thousand dollars of insurance money and probably some more money from the subway company. Dot? She would not know what to do. His mother? Poor Mama…She’ll just think that God has finally paid me off, he mused.

  He seethed with impatience; he was both scared and glad, yearning to find shelter before meeting anyone he knew. Anxiety now drove a sharp sense of distance between him and his environment. Already the world around him seemed to be withdrawing, and he could feel in his heart a certain pathos about it. There was no racial tone to his reactions; he was just a man, any man who had had an opportunity to flee and had seized upon it. He was afraid of his surroundings and he knew that his surroundings did not know that he was afraid. In a way, he was a criminal, not so much because of what he was doing, but because of what he was feeling. It was for much more than merely criminal reasons that he was fleeing to escape his identity, his old hateful consciousness. There was a kind of innocence that made him want to shape for himself the kind of life he felt he wanted, but he knew that that innocence was deeply forbidden. In a debate with himself that went on without words, he asked himself if one had the right to such an attitude? Well, he would see…

  He took a northbound trolley on State Street and pushed his way apprehensively into the packed crowd and stood swaying. Was there anything in his manner that would attract attention? Could others tell that he was nervous, trying to hide a secret? How could one act normally when one was trying to act normally? He caught hold of a strap and, his shoulders jostling others, rocked with the motion of the trolley.

  He began to see that this project of deception he had taken upon himself back there in the winging snow of the street was much bigger than he had realized. It was a supreme challenge that went straight to the very heart of life. What was he to do with himself? For years he had been longing for his own way to live and act, and now that it was almost his, all he could feel was an uncomfortable sense of looseness. What puzzled him most was that he could not think of concrete things to do. He was going to a cheap hotel in order to hide for a few days, but beyond that he had no ideas, no plans. He would have to imagine this thing out, dream it out, invent it, like a writer constructing a tale, he told himself grimly as he watched the blurred street lamps flash past the trolley’s frosted window.

  As he neared 22nd Street he edged forward through the crowd, keeping his head down to conceal his face. He swung off and shivered from the penetrating dampness that bit into his bones. He was still limping, thinking: I got to find a hotel now…But…Who was he? His name? Age? Occupation? He slowed his feet. It was not easy to break with one’s life. It was not difficult to see that one was always much, much more than what one thought one was. His past? What was his past if he wanted to become another person? His past had come to him without his asking and almost without his knowing; at some moment in the welter of his spent days he had just simply awakened to the fact that he had a past, and that was all. Now, his past would have to be a deliberately constructed thing. And how did one go about that? If he went into a hotel they would ask him his name and he would not be able to say that he was Cross Damon, postal clerk…He stood still in the flood of falling snow. Question upon question bombarded him. Could he imagine a past that would fit in with his present personality? Was there more than one way in which one could account for one’s self? His mind came to a standstill. If he could not figure out anything about the past, then maybe it was the future that must determine what and who he was to be…The whole hastily conceived project all but crumpled. Maybe this dream of a new life was to
o mad? But I ought to be able to do this, he told himself. He liked the nature of this dare; there was in it something that appealed to him deeply. Others took their lives for granted; he, he would have to mold his with a conscious aim. Why not? Was he not free to do so? That all men were free was the fondest and deepest conviction of his life. And his acting upon this wild plan would be but an expression of his perfect freedom. He would do with himself what he would, what he liked.

  He did not have to decide every detail tonight; just enough had to be fabricated in order to get a hotel room without rousing too much suspicion. Later, he would go into it more thoroughly, casting about for who he was or what he wanted to be.

  He went into an ill-lighted tavern that reeked of disinfectant and sat in a rear booth and listened to the radio pour forth a demonical jazz music that linked itself with his sense of homelessness. The strains of blue and sensual notes were akin to him not only by virtue of their having been created by black men, but because they had come out of the hearts of men who had been rejected and yet who still lived and shared the lives of their rejectors. Those notes possessed the frightened ecstasy of the unrepentant and sent his feelings tumbling and coagulating in a mood of joyful abandonment. The tavern was filled with a mixture of white and black sporting people and no one turned to look at him. He ordered a beer and sat hunched over it, wondering who he would be for the next four or five days until he left for, say, New York. To begin his new life he would relive something he knew well, something that would not tax too greatly his inventive powers. He would be a Negro who had just come up fresh from the Deep South looking for work. His name? Well…Charles…Charles what? Webb…Yes, that was good enough for the time being. Charles Webb…Yes, he had just got in from Memphis; he had had a hard time with whites down there and he was damn glad of being in the North. What had he done in Memphis? He had been a porter in a drugstore…He repressed a smile. He loved this