"You can look at me, Mr. Wiggins; I don't mind." I raised my head, and I saw him standing there under the window, big and tall, and not stooped as he had been in chains. "I'm go'n do my best, Mr. Wiggins. That's all I can promise. My best." "You're more a man than I am, Jefferson." " 'Cause I'm go'n die soon? That make me a man, Mr. Wiggins?" "My eyes were closed before this moment, Jefferson. My eyes have been closed all my life. Yes, we all need you. Every last one of us. " He studied me awhile, then he turned his back and looked up at the window. "So pretty out there," he said. "So pretty. I ain't never seen it so pretty." I looked at him standing there big and tall, his broad back toward me. "What it go'n be like, Mr. Wiggins?" I thought I knew what he was talking about, but I didn't answer him. He turned around to face me. "What it go'n feel like, Mr. Wiggins?" I shook my head. I felt my eyes burning. "I hope it ain't long." "It's not long, Jefferson," I said. "How you know, Mr. Wiggins?" "I read it." I was not looking at him. I was looking at the wall. It had been in the newspaper. The first jolt, if everything is right, immediately knocked a person unconscious. He came back and sat down on the bunk. "I'm all right, Mr. Wiggins." I nodded without looking at him. "Care for a 'tato, Mr. Wiggins?" he said, opening the paper bag [from Miss Emma]. "Sure," I said. . . . [Miss Emma, Reverend Ambrose, Jefferson and I were trying to eat in the storeroom the day before the chair was installed. Jefferson and I decided to take a walk.] "Jefferson," I said. We had started walking [around the storeroom]. "Do you know what a hero is, Jefferson? A hero is someone who does some thing for other people. He does something that other men don't and can't do. He is different from other men. He is above other men. No matter who those other men are, the hero, no matter who he is, is above them." I lowered my voice again until we had passed the table. "I could never be a hero. I teach, but I don't like teaching. I teach because it is the only thing that an educated black man can do in the South today. I don't like it; I hate it. I don't even like living here. I want to run away. I want to live for myself and for my woman and for nobody else. "That is not a hero. A hero does for others. He would do anything for people he loves, because he knows it would make their lives better. I am not that kind of person, but I want you to be. You could give something to [your nannan], to me, to those children in the quarter. You could give them something that I never could. They expect it from me, but not from you. The white people out there are saying that you don't have it—that you're a hog, not a man. But I know they are wrong. You have the potentials. We all have, no matter who we are.
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