The Outsider

by Richard Wright

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “We are searching for the address of a man’s family; the man, we believe, was buried from one of your Harlem churches about two or three days ago. The name is Lane, Lionel Lane. Could you tell us where his parents are living? Or do you know the last address of the deceased?”

  “Just a moment, please.”

  Cross waited, looking uneasily over his shoulder at people shopping at the counter of the drugstore.

  “We have no direct information here, sir. But I understand that there was a funeral three days ago at our Ephesus Church at 101 West 123rd Street. Why don’t you get in touch with Elder Wiggins there?”

  “Thank you,” Cross said.

  He dialed Elder Wiggins and, still impersonating an insurance official, asked for the whereabouts of the Lane family.

  “Oh, yes,” the gentle, tired voice of a man came over the wire. “We held services for the Departed at our church last Thursday. But I cannot help you very much, sir. My secretary’s not here for the moment. But I know that the Lane family lives in Newark, New Jersey. The Departed lived here in Harlem, I’m fairly certain. You see, the Departed was not himself a member of our church. His mother, Mrs. Mary Lane, is one of our oldest members and, though she lives in Newark, she wanted her son buried from our church. If you’d care to phone later today…”

  “It won’t be necessary,” Cross said. “Our Newark office will be able to locate the family. I thank you very much.”

  So Lionel Lane had parents in New Jersey. Well, he’d go there right now. Twenty minutes later Cross was in the Pennsylvania Station, hunched over a Newark telephone directory, feverishly thumbing the thin, crisp leaves, searching under L’s. Good Lord, here was a long list of names of Lanes: there was an Albert Lane, a Bernard Lane, a Daniel Lane, a Harry Lane…and then there came Mary Lane…This undoubtedly was Lionel Lane’s mother. He jotted down the address and an hour later he was in Newark, inquiring for the street on which the Lanes lived. He was so excited that he had to calm himself when he learned that the street was located in the heart of the local Black Belt: 17 Broome Street in the Hill District. This was it!

  When he reached the bleak neighborhood, he slowed and mapped out his plan of attack. Presuming that he was on the track of the right family, to go to the Lane house directly and ask questions carried a risk. If, when carrying the name of Lionel Lane, something happened to him and caused that name to get into the newspapers, someone might recall that a stranger had been around asking vague questions. It would be better if he posed as a social worker or a salesman of some sort and in that way pick up bits of information from neighbors or shopkeepers. What kind of a family were the Lanes? Working class or professional? If they turned out to be a family of prominent citizens, then it would be almost impossible to go to the Bureau of Vital Statistics in a city like this and impersonate Lionel Lane and demand a birth certificate without getting into serious trouble. He first had to get hold of some basic facts.

  The Lane house proved to be a ramshackle, wooden affair, sitting unpainted on a run-down dirty, treeless street in a bleak slum area. If Lionel Lane came out of this hellhole, then not many people of any consequence could have known him. But was this the house of the family of Lanes whose son was buried in Woodvale?

  At that moment he saw an elderly Negro postman bent under the weight of a mailbag coming toward him over the snowy street.

  “Say,” Cross stopped him, “have you got a minute? Maybe you can help me?”

  The postman paused, spat a stream of tobacco juice into a snowdrift, eyed Cross cynically and mumbled: “That depends on what kind of help you want. I’m on my rounds. But I’ll spare you a minute.”

  “I’m from the Central Credit Bureau of New York City,” Cross lied fluently. “I’m trying to track down a young chap by the name of Lionel Lane.”

  “Lionel Lane?” the postman echoed, smiling ironically. “He owed money somewhere?”

  “Confidentially, yes.”

  “Well, the people who let him have money didn’t have good sense,” the postman observed, spitting another spout of tobacco juice. “And you got a fat chance of collecting, ’cause that baby’s where you can’t get at ’im. He’s six feet deep with snow in his face. He kicked off three days ago. Had consumption—”

  “Did he live with his family?”

  “When he didn’t have any dough, he did; and that was almost all the time. He holed up somewhere in Harlem, I’m told, with a dame. Didn’t want his family to know where he was when he was with that dame. Had to forward all his mail there…”

  “Can you give me his address in Harlem?”

  “Sure; 145 West 147th Street, it was.”

  “What kind of a family has he got? Do you know ’em?”

  “Ain’t but one person in that outfit that you could call human, and that’s the mother…She’s solid, religious. But the rest of ’em—I’ve seen ’em, but I don’t know ’em and don’t want to know ’em,” the postman sought to disabuse Cross of any illusions. “Boy, if you’re thinking of giving the Lanes any more credit, then just don’t.”

  “What kind of work did Lionel Lane do?”

  “Work?” the postman mocked Cross, chuckling. “He used to work in a laundry, but for the past two years he used all his energy pulling at the neck of a bottle—”

  “Thanks, Buddy,” Cross said.

  He felt he had a chance. He went into a bar, THE FAT MAN, and schemed out his next move over a whiskey. How soon was a death reported to the clerks in the Bureau of Vital Statistics? Lionel Lane had died in Harlem and it was safe to assume that the Newark officials did not yet know that he was dead…When he approached the clerks about a birth certificate, there must not be in their minds any doubt whatsoever that he was Lionel Lane. One blunder and the whole structure he was so carefully building would tumble. How was he to handle it? He reflected intensely, calling upon his knowledge of white and black race relations to stand him in good stead. If ever he could act convincingly the role of a subservient Negro, this was the time. He would have to present to the officials an appearance of a Negro so scared and ignorant that any white American acting out the normal content of his racial consciousness would never dream that he was up to anything deceptive. But why would any black wastrel be wanting a birth certificate? Cross was well aware that the American authorities were chronically watchful these days about handing out birth certificates, for spies were using such documents to establish their claim to having been born in the United States. In the end Cross decided that a simple, an almost silly reason was the best reason that an ignorant Negro could have in demanding a birth certificate; it would have to be a reason that whites, long schooled in dealing with Negroes as frightened inferiors, would accept without question.

  He went to the City Hall and presented himself at the window marked: DUPLICATE BIRTH CERTIFICATES. Looking apprehensively about, he took his place in line. When his turn came to face the young white clerk, he said in a plaintive, querulous tone:

  “He told me to come up here and get the paper.”

  The clerk blinked and looked annoyed. “What?” the clerk demanded.

  “The paper, Mister. My boss told me to come and get it.”

  “What kind of paper are you talking about, boy?”

  “The one that say I was born,” Cross told him as though he, in his ignorance, had to teach this white man what to do.

  The clerk smiled, then laughed: “Maybe you weren’t born, boy. Are you sure you were?”

  Cross batted his eyes stupidly. He saw that he was making this poorly paid clerk happy; his pretense of dumbness made the clerk feel superior, white.

  “Well, they say I was born. If I wasn’t born, I can’t keep my job. That’s why my boss told me to come here and get the paper.” Cross let a tiny edge of indignation creep into his voice.

  The clerk regarded him with benevolent amusement and turned and yelled behind him: “Say, Jack! Come here and get a load of this, will you?”
r />   Another clerk, somewhat older, came forward and asked: “What’s up?”

  “This coon clown says he was born somewhere,” the young clerk said.

  “I don’t believe it,” the older clerk said.

  “Oh, yes, sir. I was born,” Cross said, his lips hanging open, his eyes wide with desperation.

  “Can you prove it?” the first clerk said.

  “Now, look here, Mister. I ain’t done nothing to nobody, ’specially to no white folks,” Cross wailed in deep distress, pleading innocent to a charge not even mentioned.

  “The worst thing you ever did was to be born,” the older clerk said.

  “But I ain’t done nothing wrong, Mister,” Cross protested.

  “You are always wrong,” the young clerk said. “Say, Jack, what in hell do we do with ’im?”

  The older clerk pulled down his mouth and muttered: “Hell, go ahead and give ’im a certificate if he was born around here. These clowns don’t mean any harm.”

  “If I can’t say I was born, I’ll lose my job,” Cross complained.

  “Where do you work?” the young clerk asked.

  “Machine Tools Company, in Brooklyn.”

  “What’s the address?”

  “I don’t know the number, not exactly, Mister. But you take the Fulton Street bus and ride—”

  “Can that,” the old clerk said. “You were born in Newark, you are sure of that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Wait, Jack. He ought to know something about his job,” the young clerk said. “Say, boy, what’s your boss’s name?”

  Cross stared in blank amazement, then he shook his head as though trying to avoid the worst trap of a black man’s life.

  “Mister, I don’t ask white folks their personal business,” he told them.

  The clerks shouted their laughter.

  “Where were you born in Newark?” the young clerk asked.

  Cross blinked again, then looked up brightly, as though his memory had returned, and said: “In the Third Ward.” He pointed elaborately in the direction.

  “Whereabouts in the Third Ward?”

  “Over the hill—Why, Mister, everybody knows where that is.”

  The two clerks howled with laughter. The young clerk asked: “What street were you born on ‘over the hill’, as you call it? And on what date were you born? And what’s your name? You got a name, I suppose?”

  “Yes, sir. They gave me a name,” he said, falling silent.

  “Well, what in hell is it?”

  “But you know,” Cross said, amazement showing on his face. “They say you got all the names here.”

  The two clerks bent double with mirth. And as he stood there masterfully manipulating their responses, Cross knew exactly what kind of man he would pretend to be in order to allay suspicions if he ever got into trouble. In his role of an ignorant, frightened Negro, each white man—except those few who were free from the race bias of their group—he would encounter would leap to supply him with a background and an identity; each white man would project out upon him his own conception of the Negro and he could safely hide behind it.

  “All right, boy,” the young clerk agreed. “We’ll give you your certificate if we can find your record. But we’ve got to have your name and the year of your birth. We’re pretty smart here, I admit. But we’re not so smart that we can guess your name.”

  “They call me Lionel,” Cross admitted at last.

  “Lionel what?”

  “What Lionel what?” Cross asked stupidly.

  “What kind of work do you do at Machine Tools?”

  “I load up trucks.”

  “Do you carry anything upstairs in your head?”

  “In my head?” Cross repeated. “I ain’t got nothing in my head. What you mean?”

  Laughter spilled out of the clerks.

  “Boy, if your brains were baggage, you could ship them by air freight for nothing,” the older clerk said.

  “I ain’t got nothing to ship nowhere,” Cross defended himself.

  “Now, look, everybody’s got a first name and a last name, see? Now, for God’s sake, tell us your last name—”

  “Lane,” Cross responded promptly.

  “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

  “’Cause you didn’t ask me.”

  The clerks threw up their hands in mock despair. People in the line behind Cross, all of whom were white, had begun to join in the merriment. Cross wondered who was laughing at whom.

  “In what year were you born?”

  “My mama told me it was in 1924; the 29th of June.”

  “Give us a dollar and we’ll mail you a duplicate certificate,” the young clerk said.

  “But my boss told me to bring it in the morning, or I ain’t got no job,” Cross complained, whining a bit.

  “Okay. Sit down over there on that bench. We’ll see what we can do. We’ll look it up,” the older clerk said resignedly.

  Two hours later Cross had the duplicate birth certificate of Lionel Lane and had left in the minds of the clerks a picture of a Negro whom the nation loved and of whom the clerks would speak in the future with contemptuous affection. Maybe some day I could rule this nation with means like this, Cross mused as he rode back to New York. All you have to do is give the people what they want…He knew that deep in their hearts those two white clerks knew that no human being on earth was as dense as he had made himself out to be, but they wanted, needed to believe such of Negroes and it helped them to feel racially superior. They were pretending, just as he had been pretending. But maybe men sometimes pretended for much bigger and graver stakes?

  Cross was now as solidly identified as he felt he could be for the time being, and the first desire that sprang into his mind was to try to redress, to some extent, the unintentional wrong he had done to that waiter, Bob Hunter, whom he had met in the dining car more than two weeks ago. He fished in his pocket for the address, made his way to Harlem, and found the grim tenement where Hunter lived. Climbing six flights of rickety stairs, he squinted in shadows from doorway to doorway until he came to a white card whose printed legend read:

  MR. & MRS. ROBERT HUNTER

  He pushed the bell and a moment later he was staring into Bob Hunter’s brown and nervous face. The man was in his shirt sleeves and held a pamphlet with a yellow and red back in his left hand.

  “Remember me?” Cross asked.

  “Man, where in hell have you been?” Bob exclaimed, his face breaking in a broad grin. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere! Come in.”

  Cross walked into a large, clean, rather bare apartment and Bob led him into the living room.

  “You are Mr. Jordan, ain’t you?” Bob asked to make sure.

  “How are you, Bob?” Cross asked, ignoring the question.

  “Sit down, man,” Bob said. “I ain’t complaining, though I got a lot I could complain about.” Bob’s eyes were fixed intently upon Cross’s face and the lips held a nervous smile.

  Cross felt that he could not deceive the man any longer.

  “Bob, I suppose you wondered about me, hunh?” Cross asked.

  “Well, I sure needed you, man…I went to that address you gave me, but it was a funeral parlor and nobody knew you there. Is your name really Jordan?” Bob asked in an appealing yet venturesome tone of voice.

  Cross placed his right hand reassuringly upon Bob’s shoulder. “Take it easy, Bob. I’ll explain everything. Say, how did you make out in that little trouble you had on the train?”

  “Hunh? What trouble?” Bob asked.

  Cross knew that Bob was pretending that he had not understood. He’s trying to save face…

  “Did that woman on the train make any trouble for you?” Cross asked.

  Bob shrugged his shoulders and laughed, but there was no mirth in his voice. “Trouble? Hell, man, I got fired! I lost my goddamn job, that’s all.” Bob’s eyes were evasive but he could not hide that he felt that Cross had betrayed him unpardonably
. “I ain’t blaming you none, man. After all, you did jump up and stop that bitch from hitting me with that water pitcher, didn’t you? And if you gave me a bum steer ’bout your name and address—Well, you know your own business.”

  “But didn’t the union help you?” Cross asked.

  “Man, I’m too goddamn militant for my union,” Bob explained. “I had a hell of a fight with ’em. My union’s got a left wing, and I’m with the left. When the company brought me up on charges, the rightists piled in on me, and I was out. Man, only you, an eyewitness, could have saved me. How come you fooled me like that? You could’ve said you didn’t want to help me—Maybe I could’ve found some other witnesses. But I didn’t look for any ’til it was too late. I was counting on you…”

  Bob related how the white woman had sued the company, how the company had charged him with carelessness, how the leftists in the union had tried to defend him, and how, in the end, because he could not get a single witness to establish independent corroboration of his version of the accident, he had lost.

  “But what about that priest?” Cross asked.

  “I went to see ’im,” Bob said. “Told me he didn’t want to get mixed up in it. Said his job was saving souls and stuff like that. Then he went off to Rome to see the Pope—”

  “I’m sorry, Bob.”

  “Hell, man, it’s nothing,” Bob said defiantly. “Me and Sarah’s making out.”

  “Are you working now? I can let you have a loan—”

  “Man,” Bob’s face spread in a wide, glad grin, “I’m working for the biggest outfit in the world!”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Party, man.”

  “What party?”

  “Hell, man! There ain’t but one Party and that’s the Communist Party,” Bob explained proudly.

  “What are you doing for them?”

  “Organizing! What the hell do you think?”

  “Do you like it?”

  “I’m just crazy ’bout it,” Bob confessed with a smile. “I’m going to be a professional revolutionary, working twenty-four hours a day beating these rich white bastards. It makes me feel good!”