Such Sweet Thunder (30 page)

Everybody started tapping their feet, full of smiles. The drummer took a mean cut on the snares, and Amerigo tapped his feet and clapped his hands, too.

“Aw, it’s tight like that!” cried Mr. Jenks, patting Miss Ada softly on the behind.

“Yeah!” they all cried in concert.

“I mean it’s tight like that!”

Viola and Rutherford were doing a break-step, but now they fell away, fell back, stood pat, ready. He looked at his friends, his face illuminated by a radiant smile, and asked: “Shall I shimmy?”

“Yeah!”

“Well all right, then!”

He began to tremble, so subtly that one could hardly detect it at first, and then more noticeably, in ripples of watery movement. He shimmied faster and faster, and s-m-o-o-t-h!

“God damned! Lookit that niggah go!” cried Mr. Jenks.

“He’s a killer-diller, ain’ he!” exclaimed the man with the flask and the scar.

“Come on, Babe!” said Rutherford to Viola who was still standing pat.

“Yeah, cut that cat!” cried the man with the Italian hair. Miss Vera wound the crank and started the record spinning again.

Viola fell back, away, stood still, legs spread apart, arms outstretched, fingers popping to the rhythm of “Tight Like That.” She began to tremble, to shake all over. Like she was made out of jelly! he thought, and was suddenly overcome by a feeling of profound embarrassment that made him look away. But when the hand-clapping became louder and the shouts of encouragement more excited he had to look, to behold with intense private pleasure the faint sheen of sweat upon her dark velvety skin. She was smiling and her teeth shone like pearls. Rhinestone earrings glittered in her earlobes.

“JESUS!” cried Miss Allie Mae: “VI-O-LA! LOOK WHAT TIME IT IS!”

“Let’s git out a here!” cried one of the men.

“Unh! The dance is over at one-thirty!” said Rutherford.

“What time
is
it?” asked Viola.

“Twelve-fifteen!” said the man with the scar.

The music stopped. The taxi honked from the street below, while coat sleeves flitted in arcs through the air and scarves whisked before his eyes, his nose smarting from the intoxicating scent of perfume.

“Got the tickets?” Viola asked.

“Yeah — I think,” said Rutherford, “let me see,” searching his pockets. “Yeah, I got ’um.”

“Where’s the juice?” cried the scar-faced man.

“Hereitis,” said the brown-skinned woman.

“Bye, Tony,” said Mr. Jenks.

“S’long, ol’-timer,” said Mr. Scar.

“S’long,” he replied sadly.

A blast of cold air rushed in the door.

“Come on, man,” said Rutherford, “the taxi’s waitin’, if we don’t git out a here ’em gals never will come!”

The men moved out onto the porch, talking, laughing, blowing
smoke from cigarettes. The women next, flitting between his upturned eyes and the floor lamp.

“Bye, baby!” said Miss Allie Mae.

“Bye, hon,” said Viola, kissing him. “You be good, an’ go straight to bed. Tell you all about it when we git home.”

“Bye-bye,” said Miss Patsy, Miss Vera.

“Bye,” he said, but they had already rushed out the door. The taxi honked three times more.

“Unh!” cried Rutherford, suddenly appearing in the door.

“What’s the matter?” asked Viola from the top step.

“Forgot
my
booze!”

“Slowpoke!”

“Come on, Vi!” yelled Miss Ada from the street below.

“I’m on my way!” she yelled back. “Bye, hon!” turning to him once more. Rutherford rushed past him.

“You take it easy, now, you hear?”

“Yessir.”

They ran down the steps. He heard a burst of laughter just before the taxi pulled off. He shut the door and locked it. He turned and faced the empty house. It was filled with the glare of all the lights, with the aftertones of laughter, with the traces of hilarious movement and the smell of flesh and sweat and of things to eat and drink. All the ashtrays were full of ashes and cigarette butts. A faint cloud of smoke hung over the room. Empty and half-filled glasses stood on the coffee table, the end table, the Victrola, the floor. The furniture stood about in unfamiliar attitudes. He moved and hung up the things that were necessary to move and hang up in order to make his bed. Skipping his prayers, he climbed in.…

He left the lamp burning, and tossed and turned impatiently in its light, waiting for them to come back. He tried to imagine how far away Eighteenth and Vine was, and how long it took to get there. Way out south! Music filled his ears, the sound of a huge crowd of people, men and women dancing. The Black and Tan came to mind.

He closed his eyes against the glare of the bulb, and he was suddenly in a red-orange room. It was hot. Hot red-orange light filled the room behind his closed eyelids — and then it got dark.

Boom!

The front door was standing open. Viola rushed into the room out of breath, half falling over the threshold, looking anxiously behind her, holding the train of her dress in one hand and her rhinestone shoes in the other.

“Git in that house!” Rutherford shouted from the darkness of the porch. “I’m gonna show you tanight!” He appeared in the door with an angry grimace on his face. Viola was in the middle room. She turned on the lamp.

“Now don’ start nothin’ till I —” but he was upon her:

WHAP!
his palm resounded against her shoulder, as she ducked to avoid the blow.

“LET ME OUT A MY DRESS FIRST!” she cried.

“God damned whore! Think I’m a DAMNED FOOL or somethin’ —”

And he, trembling with fear and rage, jumped out of bed and rushed toward his father with his doubled fists raised over his head.

“Don’t you hit
my
momma!”

Rutherford and Viola, suddenly distracted by his appearance, looked at each other, grinned nervously, and gestured futilely with their hands, as though they did not know what to do with them. Viola was in a defensive crouch with her dress half off, while Rutherford stood in an attitude of waiting.

“Don’t you hit
my
momma!” he was yelling as he charged.

Rutherford took a deep breath, placed his hands on his hips, and said:

“Li’l niggah, if-you-don’t-git-back-in-that-bed I’ll
kill
you!”

He froze with terror. He trembled violently. Whimpering sounds issued from his lips, but he could not cry. He gave his mother and father a despairing look. His arms fell limply to his sides.

Meanwhile Viola quickly took off her dress. Rutherford watched her dumbly, and then looked vacantly at his son, upon the small naked figure that limply slinked back to bed.

When I git big enough, I’ll
kill’im!
he thought to himself, feeling Viola’s pitying eyes upon him. An’ to hell with
her
, too!

“Turn out that light,” said Rutherford, “an’ not another peep out a you.”

Viola was already in bed. Rutherford turned on her.

“Who was that niggah, anyway? That you had to dance with four times! Makin’ a ass out a me in front a
ever’
body! I’m sick a this crap! You hear me?
Sick of it!
” His voice trembled. Viola was silent. He threw off his clothes, got into bed, lit a cigarette, and turned out the light.

In the dark he prayed that it was all over. He watched the tip of Rutherford’s cigarette blaze furiously and grow dim in a cloud of ensuing smoke, and flare out in the darkness again, and again.
Meanwhile he lay awake and waited, listened, waited, listened. After a while the red globule of light disappeared, and the bedsprings whined softly as Rutherford shifted into a sleeping position. Viola breathed deep and long.

He turned quietly on his side and faced the window. He looked out at the stars, singled one out, and
longed to be there
.…

He shivered from the cold. He had kicked off the top sheet and half of the blanket while he slept. He now discovered that his feet were cold. He pulled them under the covers. Then he heard his father in the kitchen, frying eggs and making coffee.

“It
is
a Sanie Claus!” he said to himself. He lay back down but kept his eyes fixed upon the little gas stove. There was no fire in it. He looked at the sealed-up chimney hole again. Then he tossed and turned and waited for Rutherford to call him. He listened to his mother sleeping, breathing long even breaths. He thought he heard Rutherford’s call. He raised himself upon his elbow and listened. The faint sound of paper crinkling came from the kitchen. “He’s fixing his lunch, or reading the papers.” He lay back down and looked out the window. It was filled with a cold hoary light.

And suddenly he saw a silver street lined with maple trees bordering snow-covered lawns that swept upward toward the steps and porches of beautiful stone and wooden houses. His eye wandered down the silver street until it came to a low rambling house on the corner. The steps and the terrace were filled with snow. The swing on the porch was filled with snow. Chickens, ducks, and turkeys cackled, gobbled, and pecked at the golden grains of corn that lay buried in the snow. Through the front window of the house and into the parlor he wandered: a green tree glistening with colored lights, with a bright silver star on top. The round fat belly on the coal stove glowed cherry-red from the middle room. A warm reassuring feeling came over him.…

“All right! Let’s hit ’um!” Rutherford was saying from the middle room. He focused his eyes upon the figure that stood between himself and the early-morning light filtering through the middle room window and saw that his father had his hat and coat on and his lunch under his arm. “You awake?”

“Yessir.”

Rutherford moved toward the front door.

“Dad?”

Rutherford turned and looked at him.

“Old Tommy said it ain’ no Sanie Claus!” he wanted to say, but before the words could separate themselves from his thought, Rutherford was saying:

“So long, son,” and had closed the frozen front door behind him.

He climbed into bed with his mother. “Mom?” She stirred drowsily. “Mom?”

“Aw, Amerigo, don’ start all that wringin’ an’ twistin’ at this time a the mornin’!” She turned on her side. He lay quietly until she made him get up and go to school.

He stalked moodily through the stiff metal-gray morning, kicking at the frozen clumps of tracked mud, frozen cans and bottles stuck to the earth, paying no heed to the few trembling leaves that still clung to the trees.

A general assembly was called at nine o’clock. All the children rushed to the big auditorium. They laughed and giggled and threw spitballs at each other and thumped each other on the head. They were told to be quiet. Then a strange man got up to talk. Just then Carl pinched him.

“Ouch!”

“Mister Bowles,” the man was saying, “passed away.”

He rubbed his arm and tried to catch the stranger’s words.

“He departed this world at four
A.M
.…”

Boom!

His heart pounded in his ears:

Mr. Bowles! Tommy said it wasn’t so.… Mr. Bowles!

“School will close at twelve o’clock today —” the strange man was saying.

“Hot dog!” Turner cried amid irrepressible shouts of glee that rose up from the assembly.

“Ssh!… sssh!” Miss Chapman whispered.

“Shame on you!” Miss Moore whispered.

He was ashamed for Turner and for himself. Someone behind him giggled.

“Ssssh!” he whispered to the offender, and sat very still.

“A moment of silence …” the stranger was saying, “for a tireless and devoted leader of his people.”

The silence swelled and filled the drums of his ears with the question, but Professor Bowles did not answer.

“Ain’ that a shame!” said Viola when he told her what had happened.

“Well, we a-l-l got to go
some
day,” said Rutherford that evening over his paper. “He was a fine man, though.”

“Pr’fessor Bowles!” said Aunt Rose the following afternoon, as though she were hearing his name for the first time.

“You knowed ’im didn’t you?” he asked.

“Aw yes, I knowed ’im, all right, but I never thought of ’im dyin’ like everybody else — just like the hustlers an’ pimps an’ junkies. Just like I’m gonna have to die someday. But then Jesus died, didn’ He?”

“Yes’m.”

Mr. Bowles’s name quivered in the vibrant hollow of the sad round tone, it floated like a bright silver ball through the air. It got hung in a tree, got caught in its branches and burst!

Boom!

“Unh!” Rutherford exclaimed that Friday evening, smoothing out the pages of the
Voice
. “I see where they gonna tear down the old schoolhouse! Next year the school’s gonna be on Pacific Street where the paddies usta go.”

Next year, Amerigo repeated the words to himself.
Next year
. When’s that? Wasn’t yesterday, and it wasn’t tomorrow; the sad voluminous tone that was
next year
filled his mind, engulfed the present, which seemed to stretch out in all the snowy windblown directions. And then the words
torn down
imposed themselves upon his consciousness. He saw the “kinnygarden” filled with golden sunlight, burning the surfaces of the lacquered desks, and the soft shadowy form of Miss Chapman behind the big desk at the front of the room.