That’s how the black people feel.
Once, she asked him:
‘Richard, did you go to school much when you was little?’
And he looked at her a long moment. Then:
‘Baby, I done told you, my mama died when I was born. And my daddy, he weren’t nowhere to be found. Ain’t nobody never took care of me. I just moved from one place to another. When one set of folks got tired of me they sent me down the line. I didn’t hardly go to school at all.’
‘Then how come you got to be so smart? how come you got to know so much?’
And he smiled, pleased, but he said: ‘Little-bit, I don’t know so much.’ Then he said, with a change in his face and voice which she had grown to know: ‘I just decided me one day that I was going to get to know everything them white bastards knew, and I was going to get to know it better than them, so could no white son-of a- bitch nowhere never talk me down, and never make me feel like I was dirt, when I could read him the alphabet, back, front, and sideways. He weren’t going to beat my arse, then. And if he tried to kill me, I’d take him with me, I swear to my mother I would.’ Then he looked at her again, and smiled and kissed her, and he said: ‘That’s how I got to know so much, baby.’
Every fireman, sooner or later, hits this. They only need understanding, to know how the wheels run. Need to know the history of our profession. They don’t feed it to rookies like they used to. Damn shame. (...) Only fire chiefs remember it now. (...) I'll let you in on it. (...)
When did it all start, you ask, this job of ours, how did it
Tell him, Nico di Angelo, said Cupid, voice sounding a lot like someone Nico knew. Tell him that you are a coward, afraid of yourself and your feelings. Tell him the real reason you left Camp Half-Blood, and why you are always alone.
The word echoed around Nico’s head in that strangely familiar voice: coward, coward, coward. That’s what he was,
Sanırım bunu hiç kimse okumayacak
