The Outsider

by Richard Wright

  “Hey, another whiskey here,” he called to the bartender. When he was being served, he asked: “Say, you know where a guy can find a room for rent in this neighborhood?”

  The bartender pursed his lips, put down the whiskey bottle and stood thoughtfully.

  “I know a Mrs. Crawford who lives up the street,” the bartender told him. “She’s been asking me to send her somebody. She’s kind of old, but she’s got a nice place. I lived there once myself, ’fore I got married.”

  Cross took down the number; he gulped his drink, thanked the bartender and was about to go when the door flew open and two Negro policemen entered. Dread froze him to his stool. One cop sat to one side of him and the other went to the end of the room and looked about the bar carefully, his eyes at last resting upon Cross’s face. Cross scarcely breathed. Was this it? He kept his head down, hiding his features. Goddamn, why did he always have to have that suitcase with him? He looked up and saw one of the cops coldly examining the reflection of his face in the mirror opposite him. Yes, they were looking him over; there was no doubt about it. He slipped his hand slowly into his overcoat pocket and grasped the gun. Then he started violently.

  “It’s okay, Jerry. Set it up in the back,” one of the cops boomed out.

  “Right,” the bartender said.

  Both cops disappeared wordlessly into the rear and Cross felt his hot muscles relaxing. The bartender took a bottle of whiskey back to the cops. When he returned, Cross said in a whisper: “I thought they were raiding the joint.”

  “Them? Hell, naw. They want a drink. They’re on duty this time of night and they’re just making sure no spotters are about, that’s all. Say, you gonna take that room?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Cross said. “Thanks a million.”

  Ten minutes later he was climbing dirty, smelly stairs to the door of Mrs. Crawford. He rang the bell, waited, then he heard an old woman’s voice ask: “Who is it?”

  Cross told her that Jerry, the bartender, had sent him for a room. She opened the door and peered at him. She was about sixty years old and had on a dressing gown. She’ll be safe, Cross thought.

  “Oh, you want a room? Kind of late, you know…Well, come in.”

  “I just got into the city,” Cross lied.

  “I see,” she said, trudging slowly down the darkened hallway.

  Mrs. Crawford was a brown-skinned, talkative, motherly, and slightly crippled old woman who was rather nervous at his sudden appearance.

  “When did Jerry tell you ’bout this room?”

  “A few minutes ago, Mrs. Crawford. I just left the bar,” Cross assured her.

  He accepted the room, paid his rent and an hour later he was in a warm bed and feeling more hopeful than he had felt in a long time. Soon he would have an identity. But what kind of man would he pretend to be? What kind of beliefs would he pretend to have? Would he pretend studiousness or gaiety? He would choose the kind of disposition that would make people like him and accept him. Was not that the way life was lived in this world? Didn’t people select deliberately the types of personality that would get them the kind of attention that they thought would help them? He laughed silently on his bed, enjoying the insight into life that his outlandish position was giving him. He felt that at last he was beginning to grapple with his problem, was getting near its meaning.

  The next morning near ten o’clock Cross was roused from sleep by the solicitously soft voice of Mrs. Crawford calling to him through the partly opened door.

  “Good morning. Wouldn’t you like a hot cup of coffee?” she asked, smiling shyly.

  “I’d love some, Mrs. Crawford. Would you mind if I came out in my bathrobe?” he asked her.

  “Come right along. Make yourself at home here, son,” she said. “I’ve no dining room; you’ll have to take it in the kitchen.”

  “That’s all right with me,” he told her.

  He liked her and felt secure; she was homey. Unlike Hattie, her concerns were simple. He slipped into his bathrobe and lumbered into a spotlessly tiny kitchen.

  “Hope I didn’t wake you up too early,” Mrs. Crawford mumbled.

  “Not at all. I should have been up hours ago,” Cross said, sipping black coffee and wondering about how to find a graveyard.

  “That weather outdoors beats everything!” Mrs. Crawford exclaimed.

  Through the fogged windowpane Cross could see a world of churning bits of snow and could hear the wind whimpering like a thing in agony as it tore past the corner of the building.

  “Looks like we’re in for it,” Cross commented.

  “A body needs something hot in the stomach first thing in the morning, especially on days like this,” Mrs. Crawford proceeded to give her views on life.

  She was skinny, brittle, fragile in her bone structure; her eyes were sunken, cloudy, weak.

  “There’s nothing better than a good cup of hot coffee,” he agreed, feeling that this woman was lucky to have such elementary preoccupations.

  “Planning to stay in Harlem long?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he answered honestly.

  “Where’re you from, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Not at all; I’m from Maine,” he lied, naming the first state that popped into his mind.

  “Maine? Well, what do you know about that! Are many colored people up there?”

  “Plenty,” he continued lying, beginning to relish it.

  “I didn’t know that,” Mrs. Crawford sighed over a world much too big and complex for her. “Well, you’re young and you keep on the go,” she philosophized. “Me, I’m old and I’m not too long for this life. I just pray and keep my house straight and wait for the Good Lord to call me home.” Her voice was charged with courageous resignation.

  “Oh, no! You’ll be around for a long time yet,” Cross spoke with make-believe sincerity. She looked as if she would die in two weeks. Malnutrition, maybe, he said to himself.

  “The only thing I worry about is keeping up my insurance payments,” the old woman went on, as though talking to herself. “I’ll have just enough money to lay me away decently. I don’t want a pack of strangers toting this old body of mine off to some Potter’s Field. If I thought something like that would happen to me, why, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. Before my poor husband died he bought us a little plot out in the Woodvale Cemetery. That’s where my blessed husband’s sleeping now. I’ll be joining him soon, please God.”

  Cross’s interest heightened. Woodvale Cemetery? And he was looking for a cemetery!

  “Is Woodvale a nice cemetery?” he asked casually.

  “It’s simply beautiful,” the old woman cried enthusiastically. “I’m so happy I’ll be sleeping there till God calls me to rise from the dead.” She paused and looked quizzically at Cross. “But son, you’re young. How come you interested in cemeteries?”

  “I was thinking about taking out some insurance,” Cross explained. “I’m alone too and I’ve got to look out for myself. I may as well buy a plot somewhere…”

  “You’re wise,” Mrs. Crawford approved. “Ain’t too many young folks these days serious enough to worry about important things like that…” Her dim eyes shone. “Just a minute—I want to show you something.” She rose and hobbled hurriedly out of the kitchen.

  Poor woman, Cross thought. Mrs. Crawford returned with a huge bundle wrapped in thick brown paper. She placed it upon the kitchen floor and commenced to unwrap it. Cross saw a pile of filmy summer clothing, each piece of which was delicately folded in white tissue paper.

  “This is what I’m going to wear,” Mrs. Crawford said, looking at him appealingly. “Don’t you think it’s nice?”

  “Yes; it’s nice,” Cross said, puzzled. “But where’re you going to wear it?”

  “When I pass to the other shore to meet Jesus, this is what they’re going to dress me in,” Mrs. Crawford told him sweetly.

  Cross felt that he had blundered; he quickly bent forward and fingered the aged material. There was a
pearl-handled fan made of large, colored feathers; there was a faded silk, cream-colored parasol; there was a long, tea-colored ruffled voile dress which had huge pleats and a décolleté neck-line; and there was a pair of fragile, high-heeled slippers. Cross noticed that she had even included a pair of nicely starched drawers and a pair of nylon stockings from which the price tags had not been removed. Christ Almighty! The woman was acting as though she was preparing to go to a cocktail party. He opened his mouth to tell her that her burial wardrobe was for summer and not this raging blizzard that held forth outdoors, but thought better of it. Yes, each time he thought that he was mad, he met someone else with a head full of sane, socially acceptable madness.

  “Where is Woodvale?” he asked gently, sighing.

  “Out near White Plains—”

  “Is it a colored cemetery?” he asked.

  “Strictly colored,” Mrs. Crawford assured him. “And only the best colored folks are buried there. You’d be surprised at how well they keep those graves. Why, in the summertime, it’s like a garden. I was lucky to get my plot when I did, for the prices have gone up something awful.”

  “You’re right,” Cross said, thinking that he would go out to White Plains at once. “Thanks for the coffee, Mrs. Crawford.”

  “’Twasn’t nothing, young man,” she told him.

  Half an hour later Cross was hurrying toward the subway through the raging blizzard. He was grateful for the lack of visibility, for that would obscure him when he was pillaging the tombstones of the graveyard for names and dates. He asked himself musingly if anything could be wrong with his taking the name of a dead man for his own? Did not parents every day bestow the names of the dead upon their children? Well, instead of letting someone give him the name of a dead man, he would take one.

  Arriving at White Plains, he inquired his way to the Woodvale Cemetery, which he had to reach by a long bus ride and then tramp almost a mile through deep snowdrifts. At last the cemetery came into view, veiled by demonic snowflakes dancing crazily in the winter wind. Myriads of white marble crosses and tombstones stretched away in a white, shaking shroud. The huge, iron gate was locked; no one was about. He climbed over the fence and stood in the white silence with a feeling of unreality filling him. He went to the nearest grave and peered at the inscription on the headstone: MARY HAWKINS. The hell with her…He searched farther and read: MAYBELLE SMITH. Shucks…Even people with the name of Smith have to die…He looked at yet another which said: BESSIE ROUNDTREE. Hell, were only women buried here? He walked a good way into the cemetery, looking over his shoulder to make certain that he was not being observed. He approached another batch of graves, bent and wiped snowflakes from a slab of marble with his hand and read: JAMES HOLIDAY—1934–1948. Hunh…Cross was thoughtful. Only fourteen years old, just a kid…He looked farther, reading: NEIL BROWN—1870–1950. That old bugger had a long span, he commented. But he’s not for me…

  It was proving harder to find a good birth date and a name than he thought. Snow was heaping up on the crown of his hat and his feet ached with cold. He stood, breathing gusts of vapor into the snowflakes that flitted about his face and clogged his eyelids at times. Dammit, he couldn’t give up now. But an hour later he had not found what he wanted; he had seen graves containing young girls, old men, babies, middle-aged women, the twin graves of husband and wife, of brother and sister, all kinds of graves, white and eternally silent in the shuddering snow. But all these dead seemed to have died either too early or too late for him to use their abandoned names…Hell, there must be some young men here my age, he told himself bitterly, his teeth chattering, his body shivering in an icy gale. Finally, when he discovered that he was examining the same graves twice, he found that he had somehow overlooked a plain, obscure grave whose cheap, wooden board at the head of the mound read: LIONEL LANE—1924, June 29th-1950, March 3rd…Ah, this was something like it. The guy had been buried only two days ago…He scraped the clinging snowflakes from the headboard and read the rest of the inscription:

  Sleeping secure in the Faith of the Second Coming of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen…

  Awkwardly, Cross took out his pen and ripped off a bit of paper from his notebook and copied down the name and the date; he hesitated at the expression of sentiment regarding Jesus’ second coming; but, what the hell, take it all down; it couldn’t do any harm. Had this guy been widely known? Would it be wise for him to go to the Bureau of Vital Statistics and ask for a birth certificate in the name of Lionel Lane? What proofs of identity would the clerks ask of him? He would have to invent a good pretext…Well, he would try it. What had he to lose? After all, the identity he was seeking did not have to be foolproof; he wanted a mask of normality just airtight enough to enable him to start living again without too much fear. He would create his own past if he could find a respite of but a few weeks.

  But if he wanted to assume Lionel Lane’s name, should he not try to learn something about him? Where he had worked? How he had lived? Did he have a family? His ardor ebbed somewhat when he realized that he had not the remotest idea of how to find out about the man. Oh, there must be a caretaker somewhere around this cemetery who could tell him if Lane had belonged to a church, or the name of the funeral home from which he had been buried…He looked about in the sea of frightened snowflakes, full again of that old sense of dread and criminality. But there’s nothing to be scared of…Find the caretaker and tell him that Lionel Lane had been an old pal of his, that he had just come from the army and had learned that poor Lionel was dead, and that he was searching for Lionel’s folks…

  Cross struggled through the snowdrifts back to the huge, iron gate and peered about for signs of life, a house…Nothing but silence and flurrying flakes of white. He was about to leave when he noticed on the gate a square, wooden plaque whose face was obscured by a thick layer of snow crystals. He cleaned the flakes away with his coat sleeve and read: Address all inquiries to Mr. Sloane, 6 Pine Road, White Plains…

  More frozen than alive, he dragged himself out of the cemetery and tramped back to the street. When the bus rolled silently toward him out of the scudding swirls of whiteness and stopped, he stumbled on board and had difficulty getting his money out of his pocket, so frozen were his fingers.

  “Looks like you came out of a deep-freeze,” the bus driver said.

  “You can say that again,” Cross mumbled.

  At the office of the Woodvale Cemetery in White Plains, Cross found a colored girl of about eighteen years chewing gum behind a typewriter. In reply to his plea to find the relatives of his “long lost pal”, Lionel Lane, the girl said:

  “You’d better come back this afternoon at four when Mr. Sloane’s in, because I’m not allowed to give out information like that to anybody—”

  “What harm could that do?” Cross asked. “My friend’s dead now. Come on, have a heart.” Cross aped the sentiment of nostalgic distress. “I want to see his mother—”

  “Why don’t you try his pastor at his church?” the girl suggested.

  “I don’t know his church or his pastor—”

  “And you say you were an old, dear friend of his, hunh?” the girl asked him in a light, taunting voice.

  “But I never asked him about his religion—”

  “He lived in Harlem,” the girl said. “But that’s all I can tell you. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to see Mr. Sloane…” The girl resumed masticating her gum and turned back to her typewriter.

  Though disappointed, he decided not to press her any further; he thanked her and left. If untoward events developed in the future, he did not want that girl to recall that a young man had been demanding details about Lionel Lane…Dammit, he had failed in his first essay. But perhaps he could phone the office later in the afternoon and pretend that he was…Whom could he pretend to be? He stood musing in the street amid the circling columns of snow, then he looked again at the scrap of paper upon which he had written the data he had taken from the wooden headboard of Lionel Lane’s g
rave, rereading the words: Sleeping in the Faith of the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen…Where and when had he heard words like those before? They reminded him of something. Yes! Of course…That inscription expressed the cardinal article of faith of the Seventh Day Adventist Church! He had, in his childhood in the Deep South, met and known adherents of that denomination. True, it was a guess, but not at all a bad one. His task, now, was to find the Seventh Day Adventist Church from which Lane had been buried. The girl had said that Lane had lived in Harlem, and it would be safe to assume that the church was there…

  During the subway ride to Harlem, he pondered over the difficulties involved in his quest. As the excitement wore off he realized that he was attempting a long shot gamble. For instance, he did not know if Lionel Lane had been born in the State of New York or not. Suppose it turned out that Lionel Lane had been born in, say, Ohio? What could he do then?

  At 110th Street he got out of the subway, went into a drugstore and consulted a telephone directory. Ah…Here were three addresses of Seventh Day Adventist organizations in Harlem. One was on West 135th Street and another was on West 123rd Street; and there was still another organization called the Seventh Day Adventist Conference on West 150th Street…Yes, he’d call the Conference. He dialed and heard a suave, masculine voice answering:

  “Hello.”

  “This is the Eastern Insurance Company,” Cross lied smoothly. “I wonder if you’d be kind enough to give us some information, please?”