The Artificial Nigger
by Flannery O'Connor

1952

          Mr. Head awakened to discover that the room was full of  moonlight. He
sat up and stared at the floor boards the color of silver and then at the ticking on
his pillow, which might have been brocade, and after a second, he saw half of the
moon five feet away in his shaving mirror, paused as if it were waiting for  his
permission to enter. It rolled forward and cast a dignifying light on everything.  The
straight chair against the wall looked stiff and attentive as if it were awaiting an
order and Mr. Head's trousers, hanging to the back of  it, had an almost noble air,
like the garment some great man had just flung to his servant; but the face on the
moon was a grave one. It gazed across the room and out the window where it
floated over the horse stall and appeared to contemplate itself with the look of a
young man who sees his old age before him.

          Mr. Head could have said to it that age was a choice blessing and that only
with years does a man enter into that calm understanding of life that makes him a
suitable guide for the young. This, at least, had been his own experience.
 
          He sat up and grasped the iron posts at the foot of his bed and raised himself
until he could see the face on the alarm clock which sat on an overturned bucket
beside the chair. The hour was two in the morning. The alarm on the clock did not
work but he was not dependent on any mechanical means to awaken him. Sixty
years had not dulled his responses; his physical reactions, like his moral ones, were
guided by his will and strong character, and these could be seen plainly in his
features. He had a long tube- like face with a long rounded open jaw and a long
depressed nose. His eyes were alert but quiet, and in the miraculous moonlight they
had a look of composure and of ancient wisdom as if they belonged to one of the
great guides of men. He might have been Vergil summoned in the middle of the
night to go to Dante or better, Raphael, awakened by a blast of God's light to fly to
the side of Tobias. The only dark spot in the room was Nelson's pallet, underneath
the shadow of the window.

         Nelson was hunched over on his side, his knees under his chin and his heels
under his bottom. His new suit and hat were in the boxes that they had been sent in
and these were on the floor at the foot of the pallet where he could get his hands on
them as soon as he woke up. The step jar, out of the shadow and made snow-white
in the moonlight, appeared to stand guard over him like a small personal angel. Mr.
Head lay back down, feeling entirely confident that he could carry out the moral
mission of  the coming day. He meant to be up before Nelson and to have the
breakfast cooking by the time he awakened. The boy was always  irked when Mr.
Head was the first up. They would have to leave the house at four to get to the
railroad junction by five-thirty. The train was to stop for them at five forty-five and
they had to be there on time for this train was stopping merely to accommodate
them.

         This would be the boy's first trip to the city though he claimed it would be his
second because he had been born there. Mr. Head had tried to point out to him that
when he was born he didn't have the intelligence to determine his whereabouts but
this had made no impression on the child at all and he continued to insist that this
was to be his second trip. It would be Mr. Head's third trip. Nelson had said, "I
will've already been there twict and I ain't but ten."

         Mr. Head had contradicted him.

         "If you ain't been there in fifteen years, how you know you'll be able to find
your way about?" Nelson had asked. "How you know it hasn't changed some?"

         "Have you ever," Mr. Head had asked, "seen me lost?"

         Nelson certainly had not but he was a child who was never satisfied until he
had given an impudent answer and he replied, "It's nowhere around here to get lost
at."

         "The day is going to come," Mr. Head prophesied, "when you'll find you ain't as
smart as you think you are." He had been thinking about this trip for several months
but it was for the most part in moral terms that he conceived it. It was to be a lesson
that the boy would never forget. He was to find out from it that he had no cause for
pride merely because he had been born in a city. He was to find out that the city is
not a great place. Mr. Head meant him to see everything there is to see in a city so
that he would be content to stay at home for the rest of his life. He fell asleep
thinking how the boy would at last find out that he was not as smart as he thought he
was.

         He was awakened at three-thirty by the smell of fatback frying and he leaped
off his cot. The pallet was empty and the clothes boxes had been thrown open. He
put on his trousers and ran into the other room. The boy had a corn pone on cooking
and had fried the meat. He was sitting in the half-dark at the table, drinking cold
coffee out of a can. He had on his new suit and his new gray hat pulled low over his
eyes. It was too big for him but they had ordered it a size large because they
expected his head to grow. He didn't say anything but his entire figure suggested
satisfaction at having arisen before Mr. Head.

         Mr. Head went to the stove and brought the meat to the table in the skillet.
"It's no hurry," he said. "You'll get there soon enough and it's no guarantee you'll
like it when you do neither," and he sat down across from the boy whose hat
teetered back slowly to reveal a fiercely expressionless face, very much the same
shape as the old man's. They were grandfather and grandson but they looked enough
alike to be brothers and brothers not too far apart in age, for Mr. Head had a
youthful expression by daylight, while the boy's look was ancient, as if he knew
everything already and would be pleased to forget it.

         Mr. Head had once had a wife and daughter and when the wife died, the
daughter ran away and returned after an interval with Nelson. Then one morning,
without getting out of bed, she died and left Mr. Head with sole care of the year-old
child. He had made the mistake of telling Nelson that he had been born in Atlanta. If
he hadn't told him that, Nelson couldn't have insisted that this was going to be his
second trip.

         "You may not like it a bit," Mr. Head continued.  "It'll be full of niggers."

         The boy made a face as if he could handle a nigger.

         "All right," Mr. Head said.  "You ain't ever seen a nigger."

         "You wasn't up very early," Nelson said.

         "You ain't ever seen a nigger," Mr. Head repeated. "There hasn't been a
nigger in this county since we run that one out twelve years ago and that was before
you were born." He looked at the boy as if he were daring him to say he had ever
seen a Negro.

         "How you know I never saw a nigger when I lived there before?" Nelson
asked. "I probably saw a lot of niggers."

         "If you seen one you didn't know what he was," Mr. Head said, completely
exasperated. "A six-month-old child don't know a nigger from anybody else."

         "I reckon I'll know a nigger if I see one," the boy said and got up and
straightened his slick sharply creased gray hat and went outside to the privy.

         They reached the junction some time before the train was due to arrive and
stood about two feet from the first set of tracks. Mr. Head carried a paper sack with
some biscuits and a can of sardines in it for their lunch. A coarse-looking
orange-colored sun coming up behind the east range of mountains was making the
sky a dull red behind them, but in front of them it was still gray and they faced a
gray transparent moon, hardly stronger than a thumbprint and completely without
light. A small tin switch box and a black fuel tank were all there was to mark the
place as a junction; the tracks were double and did not converge again until they
were hidden behind the bends at either end of the clearing. Trains passing appeared
to emerge from a tunnel of trees and, hit for a second by the cold sky, vanish
terrified into the woods again. Mr. Head had had to make special arrangements with
the  ticket agent to have this train stop and he was secretly afraid it would not, in
which case, he knew Nelson would say, "I never thought no train was going to stop
for you." Under the useless morning moon the tracks looked white and fragile. Both
the old man and the child stared ahead as if they were awaiting an apparition.

         Then suddenly, before Mr. Head could make up his mind to turn back, there
was a deep warning bleat and the train appeared, gliding very slowly, almost silently
around the bend of trees about two hundred yards down the track, with one yellow
front light shining. Mr. Head was still not certain it would stop and he felt it would
make an even bigger idiot of him if it went by slowly. Both he and Nelson, however,
were prepared to ignore the train if it passed them.

         The engine charged by, filling their noses with the smell of hot metal and then
the second coach came to a stop exactly where they were standing. A conductor
with the face of an ancient bloated bulldog was on the step as if he expected them,
though he did not look as if it mattered one way or the other to him if they got on or
not. "To the right," he said.

         Their entry took only a fraction of a second and the train was already
speeding on as they entered the quiet car. Most of the travelers were still sleeping,
some with their heads hanging off the chair arms, some stretched across two seats,
and some sprawled out with their feet in the aisle. Mr. Head saw two unoccupied
seats and pushed Nelson toward them. "Get in there by the winder," he said in his
normal voice which was very loud at this hour of the morning. "Nobody cares if you
sit there because it's nobody in it. Sit right there."

         "I heard you," the boy muttered. "It's no use in you yelling," and he sat down
and turned his head to the glass. There he saw a pale ghost-like face scowling at him
beneath the brim of a pale ghost-like hat. His grandfather, looking quickly too, saw
a different ghost, pale but grinning, under a black hat.

         Mr. Head sat down and settled himself and took out his ticket and started
reading aloud everything that was printed on it. People began to stir. Several woke
up and stared at him. "Take off your hat," he said to Nelson and took off his own
and put it on his knee. He had a small amount of white hair that had turned  tobacco
colored over the years and this lay flat across the back of his head. The front of his
head was bald and creased. Nelson took off his hat and put it on his knee and they
waited for the conductor to come ask for their tickets.

         The man across the aisle from them was spread out over two seats, his feet
propped on the window and his head jutting into the aisle. He had on a light blue
suit and a yellow shirt unbuttoned at the neck. His eyes had just opened and Mr.
Head was ready to introduce himself when the conductor came up from behind and
growled, "Tickets."

         When the conductor had gone, Mr. Head gave Nelson the return half of his
ticket and said, "Now put that in your pocket and don't lose it or you'll have to stay
in the city."

         "Maybe I will," Nelson said as if this were a reasonable suggestion.

         Mr. Head ignored him. "First time this boy has ever been on a train," he
explained to the man across the aisle, who was sitting up now on the edge of his
seat with both feet on the floor.

         Nelson jerked his hat on again and turned angrily to the window.

         "He's never seen anything before," Mr. Head continued. "Ignorant as the day
he was born, but I mean for him to get his fill once and for all."

         The boy leaned forward, across his grandfather and toward the stranger. "l
was born in the city," he said. "l was born there. This is my second trip." He said it
in a high positive voice but the man across the aisle didn't look as if he understood.
There were heavy purple circles under his eyes.

         Mr. Head reached across the aisle and tapped him on the arm. "The thing to
do with a boy," he said sagely, "is to show him all it is to show. Don't hold nothing
back."

         "Yeah," the man said. He gazed down at his swollen feet and lifted the left
one about ten inches from the floor. After a minute he put it down and lifted the
other. All through the car people began to get up and move about and yawn and
stretch. Separate voices could be heard here and there and then a general hum.
Suddenly Mr. Head's serene expression changed. His mouth almost closed and a
light, fierce and cautious both, came into his eyes. He was looking down the length
of the car. Without turning, he caught Nelson by the arm and pulled him forward.
"Look," he said.

         A huge coffee-colored man was coming slowly forward. He had on a  light
suit and a yellow satin tie with a ruby pin in it. One of his hands rested on his
stomach which rode majestically under his buttoned coat, and in the other he held
the head of a black walking stick that he picked up and set down with a deliberate
outward motion each time he took a step. He was proceeding very slowly, his large
brown eyes gazing over the heads of the passengers. He had a small white mustache
and white crinkly hair. Behind him there were two young women, both coffee-
colored, one in a yellow dress and one in a green. Their progress was kept at the
rate of his and they chatted in low throaty voices as they followed him.
         
         Mr. Head's grip was tightening insistently on Nelson's arm. As the procession
passed them, the light from a sapphire ring on the brown hand that picked up the
cane reflected in Mr. Head's eye, but he did not look up nor did the tremendous man
look at him. The group proceeded up the rest of the aisle and out of the car. Mr.
Head's grip on Nelson's arm loosened. "What was that?" he asked.

         "A man," the boy said and gave him an indignant look as if he were tired of
having his intelligence insulted.

         "What kind of a man?" Mr. Head persisted, his voice expressionless.

         "A fat man," Nelson said. He was beginning to feel that he had better be
cautious.

         "You don't know what kind ?" Mr. Head said in a final tone.

         "An old man," the boy said and had a sudden foreboding that he was not
going to enjoy the day.

         "That was a nigger," Mr. Head said and sat back.

         Nelson jumped up on the seat and stood looking backward to the end of the
car but the Negro had gone.

         "I'd of thought you'd know a nigger since you seen so many when you was in
the city on your first visit," Mr. Head continued. "That's his first nigger," he said to
the man across the aisle.

         The boy slid down into the seat. "You said they were black," he said in an
angry voice. "You never said they were tan. How do you expect me to know
anything when you don't tell me right?"

         "You're just ignorant is all," Mr. Head said and he got up and moved over in
the vacant seat by the man across the aisle.

         Nelson turned backward again and looked where the Negro had disappeared.
He felt that the Negro had deliberately walked down the aisle in order to make a
fool of him and he hated him with a fierce raw fresh hate; and also, he understood
now why his grandfather disliked them. He looked toward the window and the face
there seemed to suggest that he might be inadequate to the day's exactions. He
wondered if he would even recognize the city when they came to it.

         After he had told several stories, Mr. Head realized that the man he was
talking to was asleep and he got up and suggested to Nelson that they walk over the
train and see the parts of it. He particularly wanted the boy to see the toilet so they
went first to the men's room and examined the plumbing. Mr. Head demonstrated
the ice-water cooler as if he had invented it and showed Nelson the bowl with the
single spigot where the travelers brushed their teeth. They went through several cars
and came to the diner.

         This was the most elegant car in the train. It was painted a rich egg-yellow
and had a wine-colored carpet on the floor. There were wide windows over the
tables and great spaces of the rolling view were caught in miniature in the sides of
the coffee pots and in the glasses. Three very black Negroes in white suits and
aprons were running up and down the aisle, swinging trays and bowing and bending
over the travelers eating breakfast. One of them rushed up to Mr. Head and Nelson
and said, holding up two fingers, "Space for two!" but Mr. Head replied in a loud
voice, "We eaten before we left!"

         The waiter wore large brown spectacles that increased the size of his eye
whites. "Stan' aside then please," he said with an airy wave of the arm as if he were
brushing aside flies.

         Neither Nelson nor Mr. Head moved a fraction of an inch. "Look," Mr. Head
said.

         The near corner of the diner, containing two tables, was set off from the rest
by a saffron-colored curtain. One table was set but empty but at the other, facing
them, his back to the drape, sat the tremendous Negro. He was speaking in a soft
voice to the two women while he buttered a muffin. He had a heavy sad face and his
neck bulged over his white collar on either side. "They rope them off," Mr. Head
explained. Then he said, "Let's go see the kitchen," and they walked the length of
the diner but the black waiter was coming fast behind them.

         "Passengers are not allowed in the kitchen!" he said in a haughty voice.
"Passengers are NOT allowed in the kitchen!"

         Mr. Head stopped where he was and turned. "And there's good reason for
that," he shouted into the Negro's chest, "because the cockroaches would run the
passengers out!"

         All the travelers laughed and Mr. Head and Nelson walked out, grinning. Mr.
Head was known at home for his quick wit and Nelson felt a sudden keen pride in
him. He realized the old man would be his only support in the strange place they
were approaching. He would be entirely alone in the world if he were ever lost from
his grandfather. A terrible excitement shook him and he wanted to take hold of Mr.
Head's coat and hold on like a child.

         As they went back to their seats they could see through the passing windows
that the countryside was becoming speckled with small houses and shacks and that a
highway ran alongside the train. Cars sped by on it, very small and fast. Nelson felt
that there was less breath in the air than there had been thirty minutes ago. The man
across the aisle had left and there was no one near for Mr. Head to hold a
conversation with so he looked out the window, through his own reflection, and
read aloud the names of the buildings they were passing. "The Dixie Chemical
Corp!" he announced. "Southern Maid Flour! Dixie Doors! Southern Belle Cotton
Products! Patty's Peanut Butter! Southern Mammy Cane Syrup!"

         "Hush up!" Nelson hissed.

         All over the car people were beginning to get up and take their luggage off
the overhead racks. Women were putting on their coats and hats. The conductor
stuck his head in the car and snarled, '"Firstopppppmry,",,, and Nelson lunged out of
his sitting position, trembling. Mr. Head pushed him down by the shoulder.

         "Keep your seat," he said in dignified tones. "The first stop is on the edge of
town. The second stop is at the main railroad station." He had come by this
knowledge on his first trip when he had got off at the first stop and had had to pay a
man fifteen cents to take him into the heart of town. Nelson sat back down, very
pale. For the first time in his life, he understood that his grandfather was indis-
pensable to him.

         The train stopped and let off a few passengers and glided on as if it had never
ceased moving. Outside, behind rows of brown rickety houses, a line of blue
buildings stood up, and beyond them a pale rose-gray sky faded away to nothing.
The train moved into the railroad yard. Looking down, Nelson saw lines and lines of
silver tracks multiplying and criss-crossing. Then before he  could start counting
them, the face in the window started out at him, gray but distinct, and he looked the
other way. The train was in the station. Both he and Mr. Head jumped up and ran to
the door.   Neither noticed that they had left the paper sack with the lunch in it on
the seat.

         They walked stiffly through the small station and came out of
a heavy door into the squall of traffic. Crowds were hurrying to
work. Nelson didn't know where to look. Mr. Head leaned against
the side of the building and glared in front of him.
         
         Finally Nelson said, "Well, how do you see what all it is to see?"
         Mr. Head didn't answer. Then as if the sight of people passing had
given him the clue, he said, "You walk," and started off down the
street. Nelson followed, steadying his hat. So many sights and
sounds were flooding in on him that for the first block he hardly
knew what he was seeing. At the second corner, Mr. Head turned
and looked behind him at the station they had left, a putty-colored
terminal with a concrete dome on top. He thought that if he could
keep the dome always in sight, he would be able to get back in
the afternoon to catch the train again.  

         As they walked along, Nelson began to distinguish details and
take note of the store windows, jammed with every kind of equipment hardware,
drygoods, chicken feed, liquor. They passed one that Mr. Head called his particular
attention to where you walked in and sat on a chair with your feet upon two rests
and let a Negro polish your shoes. They walked slowly and stopped and stood at the
entrances so he could see what went on in each place but they did
not go into any of them. Mr. Head was determined not to go into
any city store because on his first trip here, he had got lost in a
large one and bad found his way out only after many people had insulted him.  

         They came in the middle of the next block to a store that had a
weighing machine in front of it and they both in turn stepped up on it and put in a
penny and received a ticket. Mr. Head's ticket said, "You weigh 120 pounds. You
are upright and brave and all your friends admire you." He put the ticket in his
pocket, surprised that the machine should have got his character correct but his
weight wrong, for he had weighed on a grain scale not long before and knew he
weighed 110. Nelson's ticket said, "You weigh  98 pounds. You have a great destiny
ahead of you but beware of dark women. Nelson did not know any women and he
weighed only 68 pounds but Mr. Head pointed out that the machine had probably
printed the number upside down, meaning the 9 for a 6.

         They walked on and at the end of five blocks the dome of the terminal sank
out of sight and Mr. Head turned to the left. Nelson could have stood in front of
every store window for an hour if there had not been another more interesting one
next to it. Suddenly he said, "I was born here!" Mr. Head turned and looked at him
with horror. There was a sweaty brightness about his face. "This is where I come
from!" he said.

         Mr. Head was appalled. He saw the moment had come for drastic action.
"Lemme show you one thing you ain't seen yet," he said and took him to the corner
where there was a sewer entrance. "Squat down," he said, "and stick you head in
there," and he held the back of the boy's coat while he got down and put his head in
the sewer. He drew it back quickly, hearing a gurgling in the depths under the
sidewalk. Then Mr. Head explained the sewer system, how the entire city was
underlined with it, how it contained all the drainage and was full of rats and how a
man could slide into it and be sucked along down endless pitchblack tunnels. At any
minute any man in the city might be sucked into the sewer and never heard from
again. He described it so well that Nelson was for some seconds shaken. He
connected the sewer passages with the entrance to hell and understood for the first
time how the world was put together in its lower parts. He drew away from the
curb.

         Then he said, "Yes, but you can stay away from the holes," and his face took
on that stubborn look that was so exasperating to his grandfather. "This is where I
come from!" he said.

         Mr. Head was dismayed but he only muttered, "You'll get your
fill," and they walked on. At the end of two more blocks he turned
to the left, feeling that he was circling the dome; and he was correct for in a half-
hour they passed in front of the railroad station again. At first Nelson did not notice
that he was seeing the same stores twice but when they passed the one where you
put your feet on the rests while the Negro polished your shoes, he perceived that
they were walking in a circle.

         "We done been here!" he shouted. "I don't believe you know where you're at!"

         "The direction just slipped my mind for a minute," Mr. Head said and they
turned down a different street. He still did not intend to let the dome get too far
away and after two blocks in their  new direction, he turned to the left. This street
contained two and three-story wooden dwellings. Anyone passing on the sidewalk
could see into the rooms and Mr. Head, glancing through one window, saw a
woman lying on an iron bed, looking out, with a sheet pulled over her. Her knowing
expression shook him. A fierce-looking boy on a bicycle came driving down out of
nowhere and he had to jump to the side to keep from being hit. "It's nothing to them
if they knock you down," he said. "You better keep closer to me."

         They walked on for some time on streets like this before he remembered to
turn again. The houses they were passing now were all unpainted and the wood in
them looked rotten; the street between was narrower. Nelson saw a colored man.
Then another. Then another. "Niggers live in these houses," he observed.

         "Well come on and we'll go somewheres else," Mr. Head said. "We didn't
come to look at niggers," and they turned down another street but they continued to
see Negroes everywhere. Nelson's skin began to prickle and they stepped along at a
faster pace in order to leave the neighborhood as soon as possible. There were
colored men in their undershirts standing in the doors and colored women rocking
on the sagging porches. Colored children played m the gutters and stopped what
they were doing to look at them. Before long they began to pass rows of stores with
colored customers in them but they didn't pause at the entrances of these. Black eyes
in black faces were watching them from every direction. "Yes," Mr. Head said, "this
is where you were born right here with all these niggers."

         Nelson scowled. "I think you done got us lost," he said.

         Mr. Head swung around sharply and looked for the dome. It was nowhere in
sight. "I ain't got us lost either," he said. "You're just tired of walking."

         "I ain't tired, I'm hungry," Nelson said. "Give me a biscuit."

         They discovered then that they had lost the lunch.

         "You were the one holding the sack," Nelson said. "I would have kepaholt of
it."

         "If you want to direct this trip, I'll go on by myself and leave you right here," Mr.
Head said and was pleased to see the boy turn white. However, he realized they
were lost and drifting farther every minute from the station. He was hungry himself
and beginning to be thirsty and since they had been in the colored neighborhood,
they had both begun to sweat. Nelson had on his shoes and he was unaccustomed to
them. The concrete sidewalks were very hard. They both wanted to find a place to
sit down but this was impossible and they kept on walking, the boy muttering  under
his breath, "First you lost the sack and then you lost the way," and Mr. Head
growling from time to time, "Anybody wants to be from this nigger heaven can be
from it!"

         By now the sun was well forward in the sky. The odor of dinners cooking
drifted out to them. The Negroes were all at their doors to see them pass. "Whyn't
you ast one of these niggers the way?" Nelson said. "You got us lost."

         "This is where you were born," Mr. Head said. "You can ast one yourself if
you want to."

         Nelson was afraid of the colored men and he didn't want to be laughed at by
the colored children. Up ahead he saw a large colored woman leaning in a doorway
that opened onto the sidewalk. Her hair stood straight out from her head for about
four inches all around and she was resting on bare brown feet that turned pink at the
sides. She had on a pink dress that showed her exact shape. As they came abreast of
her, she lazily lifted one hand to her head and her fingers disappeared into her hair.

         Nelson stopped. He felt his breath drawn up by the woman's dark
eyes. "How do you get back to town?" he said in a voice that did
not sound like his own.

         After a minute she said, "You in town now," in a rich low tone that made
Nelson feel as if a cool spray had been turned on him. "How do you get back to the
train?" he said in the same reedlike voice.

         "You can catch you a car," she said.

         He understood she was making fun of him but he was too paralyzed even to
scowl. He stood drinking in every detail of her. His eyes traveled up from her great
knees to her forehead and then made a triangular path from the glistening sweat on
her neck 'down and across her tremendous bosom and over her bare arm back
to where her fingers lay hidden in her hair. He suddenly wanted  her to reach down
and pick him up and draw him against her and then he wanted to feel her breath on
his face. He wanted to look down and down into her eyes while she held him tighter
and tighter. He had never had such a feeling before. He felt as if he were reeling
down through a pitchblack tunnel.

         "You can go a block down yonder and catch you a car take you to the
railroad station, Sugarpie," she said.
 
         Nelson would have collapsed at her feet if Mr. Head had not pulled him
roughly away. "You act like you don't have any sense!" the old man growled.

         They hurried down the street and Nelson did not look back at the woman. He
pushed his hat sharply forward over his face which was already burning with shame.
The sneering ghost he had seen in the train window and all the foreboding feelings
he had on the way returned to him and he remembered that his ticket from the scale
had said to beware of dark women and that his grandfather's had said he was upright
and brave. He took hold of the old man's hand, a sign of dependence that he seldom
showed.

         They headed down the street toward the car tracks where a long yellow
rattling trolley was coming. Mr. Head had never boarded a streetcar and he let that
one pass. Nelson was silent. From time to time his mouth trembled slightly but his
grandfather, occupied with his own problems, paid him no attention. They stood on
the corner and neither looked at the Negroes who were passing, going about their
business just as if they had been white, except that most of them stopped and eyed
Mr. Head and Nelson. It occurred to Mr. Head that since the streetcar ran on tracks,
they could simply follow the tracks. He gave Nelson a slight push and explained
that they would follow the tracks on into the railroad station, walking, and they set
off.

         Presently to their great relief they began to see white people again and Nelson
sat down on the sidewalk against the wall of a building. "I got to rest myself some,"
he said. "You lost the sack and the direction. You can just wait on me to rest
myself."

         "There's the tracks in front of us," Mr. Head said. "All we got to do is keep
them in sight and you could have remembered the sack as good as me. This is where
you were born. This is your old home town. This is your second trip. You ought to
know how to do," and he squatted down and continued in. this vein but the boy, eas-
ing his burning feet out of his shoes, did not answer.

         "And standing there grinning like a chim-pan-zee while a nigger woman gives
you direction. Great Gawd!" Mr. Head said.

         "I never said I was nothing but born here," the boy said in a shaky voice. "l
never said I would or wouldn't like it. I never said I wanted to come. I only said I
was born here and I never had nothing to do with that. I want to go home. I never
wanted to come in the first place. It was all your big idea. How you know you ain't
following the tracks in the wrong direction?"

         This last had occurred to Mr. Head too. "All these people are  white," he said.

         "We ain't passed here before," Nelson said. This was a neighborhood of brick
buildings that might have been lived in or might not. A few empty automobiles were
parked along the curb and there was an occasional passerby. The heat of the
pavement came up through Nelson's thin suit. His eyelids began to droop, and after
a few minutes his head tilted forward. His shoulders twitched once or twice and then
he fell over on his side and lay sprawled in an exhausted fit of sleep.

         Mr. Head watched him silently. He was very tired himself but they could not
both sleep at the same time and he could not have slept anyway because he did not
know where he was. In a few minutes Nelson would wake up, refreshed by his sleep
and very cocky, and would begin complaining that he had lost the sack and the way.
You'd have a mighty sorry time if I wasn't here, Mr. Head thought; and then another
idea occurred to him. He looked at the sprawled figure for several minutes;
presently he stood up.         He justified what he was going to do on the grounds that it is sometimes necessary to teach a child a lesson he won't forget particularly when the child is always reasserting his position with some new impudence. He walked without a sound to the corner about twenty feet away and sat down on a covered garbage can
in the alley where he could look out and watch Nelson wake up alone.

         The boy was dozing fitfully, half conscious of vague noises and black forms
moving up from some dark part of him into the light His face worked in his sleep
and he had pulled his knees up under his chin. The sun shed a dull dry light on the
narrow street; everything looked like exactly what it was. After a while Mr. Head,
hunched like an old monkey on the garbage can lid, decided that if Nelson didn't
wake up soon, he would make a loud noise by bamming his foot against the can. He
looked at his watch and discovered that it was two o'clock. Their train left at six and
the possibility of missing it was too awful for him to think of. He kicked his foot
backwards on the can and a hollow boom reverberated in the alley.

         Nelson shot up onto his feet with a shout. He looked where his grandfather
should have been and stared. He seemed to whirl several times and then, picking up
his feet and throwing his head back, he dashed down the street like a wild
maddened pony. Mr. Head jumped off the can and galloped after but the child was
almost out of sight. He saw a streak of gray disappearing diagonally a block ahead.
He ran as fast as he could, looking both ways down every intersection, but without
sight of him again. Then as he passed the third intersection, completely winded, he
saw about half a block down the street a scene that stopped him altogether. He
crouched behind a trash box to watch and get his bearings.

         Nelson was sitting with both legs spread out and by his side lay an elderly
woman, screaming. Groceries were scattered about the sidewalk. A crowd of
women had already gathered to see justice done and Mr. Head distinctly heard the
old woman on the pavement shout, "You've broken my ankle and your daddy'll pay
for it! Every nickel! Police! Police!" Several of the women were plucking at Nelson's
shoulder but the boy seemed too dazed to get up.

         Something forced Mr. Head from behind the trash box and forward, but only
at a creeping pace. He had never in his life been accosted by a policeman. The
women were milling around Nelson as if they might suddenly all dive on him at
once and tear him to pieces, and the old woman continued to scream that her ankle
was broken and to call for an officer. Mr. Head came on so slowly that he could
have been taking a backward step after each forward one, but when he was about
ten feet away, Nelson saw him and sprang. The child caught him around the hips
and clung panting against him.

         The women all turned on Mr. Head. The injured one sat up and shouted,
"You sir! You'll pay every penny of my doctor's bill that your boy has caused. He's a
juve-nile delinquent! Where is an officer? Somebody take this man's name and
address!"

         Mr. Head was trying to detach Nelson's fingers from the flesh in the back of
his legs. The old man's head had lowered itself into his collar like a turtle's; his eyes
were glazed with fear and caution.

         "Your boy has broken my ankle!" the old woman shouted. "Police!"

         Mr. Head sensed the approach of the policeman from behind. He stared
straight ahead at the women who were massed in their fury like a solid wall to block
his escape, "This is not my boy," he said. "l never seen him before."

         He felt Nelson's fingers fall out of his flesh.

         The women dropped back, staring at him with horror, as if they were so
repulsed by a man who would deny his own image and likeness that they could not
bear to lay hands on him. Mr. Head walked on, through a space they silently
cleared, and left Nelson behind. Ahead of him he saw nothing but a hollow tunnel
that had once been the street.
 
         The boy remained standing where he was, his neck craned forward and his
hands hanging by his sides. His hat was jammed on his head so that there were no
longer any creases in it. The injured woman got up and shook her fist at him and the
others gave him pitying looks, but he didn't notice any of them. There was no
policeman in sight.

         In a minute he began to move mechanically, making no effort to
catch up with his grandfather but merely following at about twenty paces. They
walked on for five blocks in this way. Mr. Head's shoulders were sagging and his
neck hung forward at such an angle that it was not visible from behind. He was
afraid to turn his head. Finally he cut a short hopeful glance over his shoulder.
Twenty feet behind him, he saw two small eyes piercing into his back like pitchfork
prongs.

         The boy was not of a forgiving nature but this was the first time he had ever
had anything to forgive. Mr. Head had never disgraced himself before. After two
more blocks, he turned and called over his shoulder in a high desperately gay voice,
"Let's us go get us a Co' Cola somewheres!"

         Nelson, with a dignity he had never shown before, turned and stood with his
back to his grandfather.

         Mr. Head began to feel the depth of his denial. His face as they walked on
became all hollows and bare ridges. He saw nothing they were passing but he
perceived that they had lost the car tracks. There was no dome to be seen anywhere
and the afternoon was advancing. He knew that if dark overtook them in the city,
they would be beaten and robbed. The speed of God's justice was only what he
expected for himself, but he could not stand to think that his sins would be visited
upon Nelson and that even now, he was leading the boy to his doom.

         They continued to walk on block after block through an endless section of
small brick houses until Mr. Head almost fell over a water spigot sticking up about
six inches off the edge of a grass plot. He had not had a drink of water since early
morning but he felt he did not deserve it now. Then he thought that Nelson would be
thirsty and they would both drink and be brought together. He squatted down and
put his mouth to the nozzle and turned a cold stream of water into his throat. Then
he called out in the high desperate voice, "Come on and "etcher some water!"

         This time the child stared through him for nearly sixty seconds. Mr. Head got
up and walked on as if he had drunk poison. Nelson, though he had not had water
since some he had drunk out of a paper cup on the train, passed by the spigot,
disdaining to drink where his grandfather had. When Mr. Head realized this, he lost
all hope. His face in the waning afternoon light looked ravaged and abandoned. He
could feel the boy's steady hate, traveling at an even pace behind him and he knew
that (if by some miracle they escaped being murdered in the city) it would continue
just that way for the rest of his life. He knew that now he was wandering into a
black strange place where nothing was like it had ever been before, a long old age
without respect and an end that would be welcome because it would be the end.

         As for Nelson, his mind had frozen around his grandfather's treachery as if he
were trying to preserve it intact to present at the final judgment. He walked without
looking to one side or the other, but every now and then his mouth would twitch and
this was when he felt, from some remote place inside himself, a black mysterious
form reach up as if it would melt his frozen vision in one hot grasp.

         The sun dropped down behind a row of houses and hardly noticing, they
passed into an elegant suburban section where mansions were set back from the
road by lawns with birdbaths on them. Here everything was entirely deserted. For
blocks they didn't pass even a dog. The big white houses were like partially sub-
merged icebergs in the distance. There were no sidewalks, only drives, and these
wound around and around in endless ridiculous circles. Nelson made no move to
come nearer to Mr. Head. The old man felt that if he saw a sewer entrance he would
drop down into it and let himself be carried away; and he could imagine the boy
standing by, watching with only a slight interest, while he disappeared.

         A loud bark jarred him to attention and he looked up to see a fat man
approaching with two bulldogs. He waved both arms like someone shipwrecked on
a desert island. "I'm lost!" he called. "I'm lost and can't find my way and me and this
boy have got to catch this train and I can't find the station. Oh Gawd I'm lost! Oh
hep me Gawd I'm lost!"

         The man, who was bald-headed and had on golf knickers, asked him what
train he was trying to catch and Mr. Head began to get out his tickets, trembling so
violently he could hardly hold them. Nelson had come up to within fifteen feet and
stood watching.

         "Well," the fat man said, giving him back the tickets, "you won't have time to
get back to town to make this but you can catch it at the suburb stop. That's three
blocks from here," and he began explaining how to get there.

         Mr. Head stared as if he were slowly returning from the dead and when the
man had finished and gone off with the dogs jumping at his heels, he turned to
Nelson and said breathlessly, "We're going to get home!"
 
         The child was standing about ten feet away, his face bloodless under the gray
hat. His eyes were triumphantly cold. There was no light in them, no feeling, no
interest. He was merely there, a small figure, waiting. Home was nothing to him.

         Mr. Head turned slowly. He felt he knew now what time would be like
without seasons and what heat would be like without light and what man would be
like without salvation. He didn't care if he never made the train and if it had not been
for what suddenly caught his attention, like a cry out of the gathering dusk, he might
have forgotten there was a station to go to.

         He had not walked five hundred yards down the road when he saw, within
reach of him, the plaster figure of a Negro sitting bent over on a low yellow brick
fence that curved around a wide lawn. The Negro was about Nelson's size and he
was pitched forward at an unsteady angle because the putty that held him to the wall
had cracked. One of his eyes was entirely white and he held a piece of brown
watermelon.

         Mr. Head stood looking at him silently until Nelson stopped at a little
distance. Then as the two of them stood there, Mr. Head breathed, "An artificial
nigger!"

         It was not possible to tell if the artificial Negro were meant to be young or
old; he looked too miserable to be either. He was meant to look happy because his
mouth was stretched up at the corners but the chipped eye and the angle he was
cocked at gave him a wild look of misery instead.

         "An artificial nigger!" Nelson repeated in Mr. Head's exact tone.

         The two of them stood there with their necks forward at almost the same
angle and their shoulders curved in almost exactly the same way and their hands
trembling identically in their pockets.

         Mr. Head looked like an ancient child and Nelson like a miniature old man.
They stood gazing at the artificial Negro as if they were faced with some great
mystery, some monument to another's victory that brought them together in their
common defeat. They could both feel it dissolving their differences like an action of
mercy. Mr. Head had never known before what mercy felt like because he had been
too good to deserve any, but he felt he knew now. He looked at Nelson and
understood that he must say something to the child to show that he was still wise
and in the look the boy returned he saw a hungry need for chat assurance. Nelson's
eyes seemed to implore him to explain once and for all the mystery of existence.

         Mr. Head opened his lips to make a lofty statement and heard himself say,
"They ain't got enough real ones here. They got to have an artificial one."
 
         After a second, the boy nodded with a strange shivering about his mouth, and
said, "Let's go home before we get ourselves lost again."

         Their train glided into the suburb stop just as they reached the station and
they boarded it together, and ten minutes before it was due to arrive at the junction,
they went to the door and stood ready to jump off if it did not stop; but it did, just as
the moon, restored to its full splendor, sprang from a cloud and flooded the clearing
with light. As they stepped off, the sage grass was shivering gently in shades of
silver and the clinkers under their feet glittered with a fresh black light. The
treetops, fencing the junction like the protecting walls of a garden, were darker than
the sky which was hung with gigantic white clouds illuminated like lanterns.

         Mr. Head stood very still and felt the action of mercy touch him again but this
time he knew that there were no words in the world chat could name it. He
understood that it grew out of agony, which is not denied to any man and which is
given in strange ways to children. He understood it was all a man could carry into
death to give his Maker and he suddenly burned with shame chat he had so little of
it to take with him. He stood appalled, judging himself with the thoroughness of
God, while the action of mercy covered his pride like a flame and consumed it. He
had never thought him self a great sinner before but he saw now that his true
depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair. He realized that he
was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time, when he had conceived in his own
heart the sin of Adam, until the present, when he had denied poor Nelson. He saw
that no Sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own, and since God loved in
proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise.

         Nelson, composing his expression under the shadow of his hat brim, watched
him with a mixture of fatigue and suspicion, but as the train glided past them and
disappeared like a frightened serpent into the woods, even his face lightened and he
muttered, "I'm glad I've went once, but I'll never go back again!" 

End