I became fascinated with stealing at the age of eight. I don’t know if the thrill was being able to get away with a crime, or that the crime was against the white man. Either way, it was the start of a prosperous career. I used to confiscate—read steal—cartons of cookies from the factory in town that made them, and sell them to the smaller markets in the community. I stashed them in the bushes and came back at night for them. I loaded them in my little red wagon and casually strolled down Main Street. It amazed me no one ever questioned how I got those cookies.
Negroes often got arrested for hunting animals for food. The police said it was stealing. They called it “hunting out of season.” Since hunger had no season, it meant those animals had more value than we did. One summer day, I went hunting with my .22 rifle. It went fine. I killed three wild ducks and three squirrels. My family would have meat to eat that night, and some left over for the next day. I trussed the dead animals with fishing line and attached them with fishhooks to a stick I rested on my shoulder. I walked home through the woods with the bodies dangling behind me, blood soaking the back of my shirt. I was happy and fulfilled. I had done my job as a man and provider.
Almost as soon as I stepped onto Main Street, the sheriff’s car pulled up alongside me. I hadn’t had a run-in with the sheriff before, so I continued to walk. I had done nothing wrong. He pulled the car directly in front of me and jumped out.
“Where you goin’ with those animals, boy? You steal ’em from somebody?”
I answered quickly, “No, sir. I killed them in the woods today. My family needs the meat.”
He raised an eyebrow and stared me down. “My family needs meat, too, but I’m gon’ have to arrest you for shooting animals out of season. It’s against the law, boy. I’m gon’ put your black ass in jail.”
He took the meat and told me to turn around with my hands behind my back so he could handcuff me. As I did, out of nowhere, a hard object crashed against the back of my head. I fell with the world spinning around me. The sheriff had hit me with his flashlight. He kneeled next to me, flicked open the cylinder of his gun, and showed me the bullets inside.
“I’ve got six bullets, nigger, and I’m gon’ shoot you one for every animal you killed. You got thirty seconds to get your black ass outta here or I’m gon’ shoot you dead, boy.”
I got up with the world a blur and ran as fast as I could. By the time I got home, I was so dizzy and exhausted I lay down in the shade under the tree and passed out, lying on my stomach.
Sometime later, I heard Mama screaming, “They killed my baby. They killed my baby. Those bastards! I’m gon’ get my shotgun and kill them, too.”
I opened my eyes. “What’s wrong, Mama? Are you okay? Did something happen to my sisters?”
Mama dropped to my side, shaking, she was so relieved. “I thought you were dead, Richard.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause you got blood all over the back of your shirt.”
I told my mom about going hunting and the blood on my shirt, but before I could tell her the rest, she yelped excitedly, “Thank God, we got meat today. We can eat like kings. I’m gon’ do some real good cookin’ on that meat, Sonny.”
I lowered my eyes. “Mama, the sheriff took all of the meat and hit me upside my head with his flashlight. He threatened to shoot me six times, so I ran.”
I saw a look on my mama’s face I had never seen, a sadness that seemed too deep to measure. “Richard, I love you and your sisters more than anything in this world, but if I had known life would be like this for you children, I’m not sure I would’ve had none of y’all.”
I could see the hurt, not just in her eyes, but in her walk. She climbed the steps slowly, head hung low. She had a defeated spirit and a depleted heart. On the last step, she looked back and said, “I thought you was dead. I’m glad you alive, Richard.”
So was I.
The beating set me back a bit but I recovered. The sheriff might have taken my kill, but not my ambition—my desire to steal. That grew as fast as I saw opportunities. At twelve, I started a produce garden in our backyard to stock a farm stand. Whatever I could not grow, I confiscated—stole—from white people. I stole watermelons, peaches, strawberries, blackberries, tomatoes, hickory nuts, and pecans. Pecans were my biggest seller during Christmas. When I was at school, I hired the men who loitered on street corners to work the farm stand for me.
I earned twenty-four dollars a week. Determined to make more, I confiscated cotton at night while the field hands and supervisors slept. Confident, I confiscated cotton five to six times a year. Occasionally, I killed someone’s cow, goat, or pig and sold the meat from a wagon I pulled around the neighborhood. By the time I was thirteen, my business ventures were profitable enough to move us into a little-better house at 514 East Seventy-Seventh. We put down half the cost of the land up front and agreed to pay the balance six months later. School took a backseat because I was too busy trying to make money. Still, I refused to neglect my education. I read books and tried to be a good student, but a new conflict emerged. I fancied myself a fine horn and harmonica player. I also played a mean set of drums. I wanted to be in the school band, but Mr. H, the band director, considered me a troublemaker and refused to let me play.
Mr. H was a high yellow Negro who thought his light skin made him better than those of us who were dark-complexioned. He didn’t see that it didn’t matter a damn to white folks. To them, he was still just another nigger.
“I heard around town you a big thief,” he told me. “That’s a easy way to get killed. I got some good children in my band and I ain’t gon’ let you come around and poison they minds. Boy, you the devil. You go round stealin’ from them white folks. Them people ain’t done nothin’ to you. Why you steal their stuff ?”
I shrugged. I didn’t explain my motives. He wouldn’t understand them. I was supposed to accept his word as law, but I couldn’t. I found the solution to my problem in my new best friend, a boy named Lil Man, who ran with the Cedar Grove Gang. Lil Man always had a sly look on his face and wasn’t afraid of anyone or anything. He also had a reputation for stealing in broad daylight, so I dared him to steal the decoration horn off the top of the iceman’s truck so I could play it in the band.
“I’ll give you twenty-five cents if you can get it,” I promised.
Never one to walk away from a challenge, Lil Man gave an airy wave. “Man, I can steal anything. One time I crawled under Old Man Thomas’s fence and stole a pig. And I’m gon’ do it agin, Richard.”
Old Man Thomas was a white farmer who lived on the outskirts of town. A member of the Ku Klux Klan, Thomas had already killed two Negroes who tried to imitate Lil Man’s success.
Lil Man boasted, “I crawled under the fence and grabbed one of those slimy pigs. It kept squealing so I hit him on the head with a big rock. Was my mama happy when I got home? She cleaned that pig up and cooked it. We sure ’nuff had some good eatin’.”
Sure enough, the next morning when I went to the well to get some water, Lil Man was waiting for me on the back porch with my new horn.
“You got my money, Richard?” he asked with a grin.
I dug deep into my pocket, pulled out twenty-five cents, and gave it to him.
Lil Man smiled easy-like. “Let me know if you need me to steal somethin’ else. I’ll steal it for another quarter.”
At that moment, I admired everything about him. “I don’t need nothin’ else,” I said. “But thanks a lot.”
Lil Man turned his cap backward, grinned, and walked away.
That was the last time I saw him. Three days later, some boys hunting in the woods found his lifeless body hanging from a tree. Both his hands had been cut off. Rumor had it that Mr. Thomas was having a Ku Klux Klan meeting when Lil Man tried to steal another of his pigs. The Klan caught Lil Man and decided to make an example out of him. They bound his hands and feet and tied a handkerchief around his mouth. They cut off both his hands with an ax and lynched his shocked body from a tree. Then they hung Lil Man’s hands on the fence as a warning to other niggers who thought about stealing.
There was no formal investigation. No one was ever questioned. Nobody was able to prove who killed Lil Man because no one ever tried.
For a long time, guilt prevented me from using the horn. Anger won out. Lil Man wasn’t going to die for nothing. If Mr. H wouldn’t let me play with the band officially, I would play with it unofficially. The horn was too old and battered to play, but inside was a small opening into which I inserted a whistle. I stuffed old rags around it to keep it from falling out. It had the strangest sound I’d ever heard. It sounded like a hurt chirping bird and a crying baby. Whenever the band played, I hid out of sight and blew my man-made horn.
Like a screaming banshee, I blew it and blew it. Every time I blew it, I thought about Lil Man. That sound was his sound. That cry was his last on earth. Sometimes, anger overrides fear. I had enough anger at that moment that if I’d had a good gun I might’ve killed somebody. Instead, I decided to complete what Lil Man had started. Not only would I steal the white man’s pigs, I’d take an ax and kill them. I would steal their cows, their horses, their wagons, their mules. I would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down—and if it was nailed down, I’d find a way to un-nail it and take it, too.
It was my own personal revolution.
First, I made Old Man Thomas pay for killing Lil Man over a goddamned slimy dirty-ass pig. He had a beautiful black stallion, a prized possession. He loved that horse more than he loved his kids. He used to take it to horse shows, and it always won first place. For days, I snuck into the woods and hid behind a tree and watched him pamper the horse. He kept it in a fenced corral and brushed its coat gently and talked to it like it was human. One night, I went to the corral, let the stallion out, and quietly led it away. I sold it for fifty dollars to a man who said Thomas owed him some money. I would have shot it, but I got more pleasure knowing it was still alive and Thomas couldn’t get it back.
I stole what he loved most, but that was just another lesson.