Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin Read Free Book Online Page A

The boy had disappeared.
    The man grunted disapprovingly, as though he thought I were drunk.
    I waited for a moment, thinking I would catch the bus. Then, certain it had been only a prank, I started down the side street toward well-lighted Dryades, where I knew I would be safe.
    I had gone half a block when I heard his voice again.
    “Hey, Shithead,” he said quietly.
    I tasted fear and despair like salt in my mouth.
    “You can stop right along about there anyplace, dad.”
    We walked on in silence, his footsteps again matching mine.
    “Stop right along there. Ain’t no nice people on this street for you to hide behind, Baldy.”
    I searched for some solution and could find none. Something deadly, nightmarish about the pursuit terrified me more than the pursuit itself. I wondered about my family. What if he should knock me in the head - or worse; he sounded diabolic. For an instant I imagined the expression of some police officer’s face as he looked at my black body and read my identification papers:
    JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN MANSFIELD, TEXAS
Sex: Male
Height: 6’1 1/2”
Weight: 196
Hair: Brown
Race: White
    Would he think I had merely stolen the papers from some whiteman?
    “What do you keep walking for when I told you to stop, dad?”
    I knew I should never get away from the bully unless I bluffed. I had long ago been trained in judo. Perhaps if I were lucky enough to get in the first blow, I might have a chance. I saw an alleyway in the dim light and summoned a deep growl.
    “You come on, boy,” I said without looking back.
    “You follow me, boy. I’m heading into that alley down there.”
    We walked on.
    “That’s right, boy,” I said. “Now you’re doing just like I want you to.”
    I approached the alley entrance. “I’m going in, boy. You follow me.”
    “I don’t dig you, daddy.”
    “You follow me boy, ‘cause I’m just aching to feed you a fistful of brass knucks right in that big mouth of yours.” I fairly shouted the last words.
    I stepped into the alley and pressed against the wall, sick with fright. The stench of garbage and urine surrounded me. High above the buildings’ black silhouette stars shone in a clear sky. I listened for his footsteps, ready to bolt if he accepted the challenge.
    “Blessed St. Jude,” I heard myself whisper, “send the bastard away,” and I wondered from what source within me the prayer had spontaneously sprung.
    After what seemed a long time, I stuck my head around the alley corner and looked back along the street. It stretched empty to the streetlamp at the end.
    I hurried to Dryades and along it to the well-lighted steps of the Catholic church I had visited in the afternoon. Sitting on the bottom step, I rested my head on my crossed arms and waited for my nerves to settle to calm. A great bell from the tower slowly rolled eight o’clock. I listened as the metallic clangor rolled away over the rooftops of the quarter.
    The word “nigger” picked up the bell’s resonances and repeated itself again and again in my brain.
    Hey, nigger, you can’t go in there
.
    Hey, nigger, you can’t drink here
.
    We don’t serve niggers
.
    And then the boy’s words:
Mr. No-Hair, Baldy, Shit-head
. (Would it have happened if I were white?)
    And then the doctor’s words as I left his office yesterday:
Now you go into oblivion
.
    Seated on the church steps tonight, I wondered if he could have known how truly he spoke, how total the feeling of oblivion was.
    A police car cruised past, slowed. The plaster-white face of an officers peered toward me. We stared at one another as the car took a right turn and disappeared behind the decrepit rectory of the church. I felt certain the police would circle the block and check on me. The cement was suddenly hard to my seat. I rose and hurried toward a little Negro café in the next block.
    As I stepped through the door, the Negro woman sang out: “All we got left’s beans and rice, honey.”
    “That’s fine. Bring me a big