Restless, he crawled back into another basement; he saw steps leading upward and he became excited by their familiar aspect. Had he gone up those steps? Yes, beyond that door was the room from which he had taken the radio. He mounted the steps and eased the door open and heard sounds of angry voices. He identified the voices racially; the fact that there were black voices and white voices enabled him to understand the suffering and shame and humiliation that was being undergone. The voices came from a door in front of him. Yeah, Johnson’s in there, he mumbled.

“Come on, boy! What did you do with the radio?”

“Mister, I ain’t stole no radio! I ain’t seen no radio!”

He heard a thudding sound and imagined a black boy being struck violently.

“What did you do with that radio, you black bastard?”

“I ain’t took no radio! I got my own radio at home,” the black boy’s voice rose hysterically. “You can go to my house and look . . .”

“What in hell do I want to go to your goddamn house for?”

There came to his ears the sound of another blow. He was coiled, tense; he wanted to leap through the narrow hole and across the dark of the basement and up the stairs and rescue the boy, telling him: Yeah, tell ’im you stole the radio, even if you didn’t. Tell ’im you’re guilty. . . . Don’t you know you’re guilty? And then he wanted to turn to Johnson and say: Sure, you’re guilty, too. Why do you want to beat this innocent boy? He could not stand it anymore; in frantic haste he replaced the bricks and rushed back into the sewer. A fever burned in his loins with a steadiness that would not allow him to remain still. He pushed through the leaden water with eyes staring as though propped open by invisible hands, as though they had become lidless.

Part Three

EVERY MOVE he made now was informed with a marvelous precision; his entire muscular system seemed reinforced from a reservoir of unlimited energy. He looked up; above him was a manhole cover and running up the sides of the sewer wall were several projecting steel hooks that formed a sort of ladder. He caught hold and lifted his body and put his shoulder to the cover and moved it an inch. There came to him a crash of sound and he looked into a hot glare of sunshine through which moved blurred shapes. Fear scalded him and he dropped back into the sewer’s pallid current and stood paralyzed in the shadows. A heavy car rumbled past overhead, warning him to remain in this world of dark light, jarring the steel manhole cover back into place with an imperious clang. He stood in a network of tiny poles of light flowing down from above him.

At that moment he did not really know how much fear he felt, for fear had claimed him completely; and yet it was not a fear of the policemen or the autos or the people, but a hot panic at the actions he felt he would perform if he went out into that sunshine. He stood between that terrifying world of life-in-death above him and this dark world that was death-in-life here in the underground. His mind said no; his body said yes. Torn, he knew he had to meet this thing. A low whine of impatience broke from his lips. He climbed upward again and heard the loud honking of auto horns; now and then he caught the faint snatches of human voices. He clung to the steel prongs rigidly, like a frantic cat clutching a piece of cloth; then he heaved his shoulder against the manhole cover and it slid off completely and for a moment his eyes were drowned in the terror of yellow sunshine and he stood in a deeper darkness than he had ever known during the long days he had lived underground.