Such Sweet Thunder (31 page)

He moved his head into the silver square of light that flowed in through the front room window. He gazed steadily at the moon as it slid behind a massive bank of bearded clouds. Like Santa Claus! It came out from the clouds and shone fully in his face. Its brightness made his eyes ache, but he did not move, did not close his eyes. His eyes peered into the cool blue dark depths of “Next year.”

“Go tell it on the moun-tun!” they sang in the days that followed. Miss Chapman played the accompaniment on the little upright piano that Mr. Johnson had pushed in from the hall. “Over the hills an’ faraway! Go tell it on the mountun, that Je-sus Chris’ is born!”

“When I was a mourner,” sang Miss Chapman in a deep tremulous voice. “I mourned both night and day. I asked the Lord to help me, and He showed me the way!”

“Go tell it on the moun-tun,” he sang, swinging his head from side to side with the rest of the class, tapping his feet like the grown-ups at St. John’s, “Over the hills an’ ev-ry where-ere, that Je — sus Chris’ is born.”

“Look!” cried Miss Chapman suddenly, an expression of wonder animating her face, her soft black, pink-nailed forefinger darting over their heads toward the back of the room. The children turned in a body and stared at the walls and at the pictures that hung on the walls.

“What?” asked Chester.

“I don’ see nothin’!” Harry Bell exclaimed.

“It’s
snowin’!
” cried Amerigo, suddenly perceiving the huge white flakes that fell from the sky. He rushed to the window. The excited feet of his classmates stampeded to the window.

“Aw, shucks!” cried Chester, “I thought it was
somethin’!
”

“To the cloakroom, children!” said Miss Chapman. “Put on your hats and coats! Button up well!” Minutes later they were tramping noisily onto the playground. They stretched out their arms to the snow. They stuck out their tongues and let the burning flakes melt upon them. The flakes fell slowly, majestically. Like the reverend coming down from the pulpit, he thought, watching them touch the earth lightly, and disappear, like drops of rain: quietly.

That evening when they trampled home the sky was gray and wet, and the snow was gone. But it was there just the same! he protested. I
know
it was! He could see it piled into mounds beneath the trees whose leaves had fallen, it covered the leaves.

“It’s supposed to snow tanight,” said Rutherford, sitting in the front room facing the gas stove with the evening
Star
across his knees, the bird-of-paradise lamp shining overhead. Viola, who was sitting on the sofa, looked up from her knitting and shot a worried glance at him, and then said cheerfully, too cheerfully:

“Hope it’ll be a white Chris’mas!”

Amerigo smiled secretly from his place on the floor in front of the fire, opposite his father. He took a sip of the sassafras tea that Viola had allowed him to bring in from the kitchen.

“It’s gonna be a long, tough winter.…” said Rutherford gravely. The child took up his Indian Chief tablet and began to draw out his letter to Santa Claus:

“Deer Sanie Klaws …”

“What you want Santa to bring you?” asked Viola testily.

“A pony! an’ a wagon an’ a bicycle an’-an’ —”

“You could sure use a pair a pants,” she broke in, speaking more to herself than to him. At that Rutherford looked up from his paper and glanced at the neat patches in his pants, unconsciously rubbing his bottom lip against the edge of his upper teeth.

“Ain’ that a nice picture of Mister Bowles?” Rutherford handed the paper to Viola. Amerigo looked at it through the crook of her arm: a white-headed old man glowering from an off-white foreground bordered in black. His eyes were faded and his suit looked too black.

He’s dead, thought Amerigo.

“It’s supposed to snow tanight …”
he heard his father saying, and he gripped his pencil firmly, wet the tip with his tongue, and once more applied himself to his letter:

“Deer Sanie Klaws, pa-leese breng me a pone a wite one an a …”

“Let’s see them shoes,” said Viola. He stuck out his foot. “Gone already!” She sighed.

“Let’s see,” said Rutherford peevishly, laying his paper aside. He examined the scuffed toes of the child’s shoes. “How in the
hell
do you wear out the
tops
a your shoes! Will you look at that, Babe? I ain’
never
seen
nobody
wear out the tops of their shoes like that! If it was the bottoms, you could fix ’um, but with the
tops
gone, all you kin do is throw ’um away!” Rutherford’s irritation was increasing. Amerigo could tell by the look in his eyes, and by the slow, deliberately calm voice with which he now spoke. With a deep feeling of shame and surprise he stared at the worn toes of his shoes. He grew cautious and quiet. “An’ look at the knees of that joker’s pants, will you?” Rutherford continued: “Do you
crawl
to school?”

Amerigo smiled sheepishly.

“I ain’ kiddin’! You think it’s funny to have to work every day to feed you an’-an’ buy you clothes?” Rutherford trembled with anger. Viola’s eyes darkened.

“You know how kids are, Rutherford,” she began appeasingly.

“How kids are — be damned!”

“When you was a boy, you —”

“When I was a boy — an’ no bigger’n him — I worked! Yes, sir! Sold papers, an’ had to give every damned penny I got to Momma — an’ didn’ git no new shoes, neither! I had to wear Sexton’s old hand-me-down shoes with-with paper stuck in the toes to make ’um big enough! An’ him —” pointing to Amerigo, “he hasta have ever’thin’
just right! You breakin’ your back washin’ an’ ironin’! A clean shirt every day!”

“Go to bed, Amerigo,” said Viola nervously.

He rose to his feet and headed for the kitchen.

“Two weeks before Chris’mas,” said Rutherford, “an’ here we ain’ got a cryin’ dime.”

“He kin hear you.…” Viola whispered softly as he turned on the light in the kitchen.

“I asked the old man for some money taday an’ you know what he said? I’ll straighten you, Rutherford. An’ then he darted out the door! You know what that means! I can’t hardly feed ’im let alone buy ’im a wagon. But he wants a horse! He must think he’a rich white boy or something!”

“Aw, we’ll find a way somehow,” Viola was saying as he entered the front room and started making his bed. Meanwhile they got up and went into the middle room and also prepared for bed.

The house was dark. He breathed quietly.

“The Lord’s been good to us,” Viola whispered. “We stayed tagether all this time an’ ain’ none of ’um got no more’n us. We got a lot a friends, an’ can’t nobody say nothin’ bad about us. We ain’ been sick. An’ we don’t fight
all
the time like every Tom, Dick, an’ Harry up an’ down the alley. I know ever’body’s got troubles
some
times, but we don’t have to — I mean
have
to argue an’ stuff every day — an’ … it’ll be all right. It’s just gotta be all right!”

“Yeah, I know, Babe,” said Rutherford with a thoughtful sigh. “But a man gits to thinkin’ sometimes. He works — hard — all his life! An’ the best he kin do is to live on credit. Can’t git nowheres ’cause he’s always payin’ for yesterday’s livin’ taday! An’ when tamarra comes, it’s the same cold turkey all over agin. I know how kids is. Amerigo’s a good boy! But it makes me see red when he can’t have somethin’ decent when it ain’ my fault — an’ it ain’ yourn, neither.”

Silence.

“Rutherford?”

“Whut?”

“Maybe I could, we could borra the money —”

“Where? From who? We ain’ got no collateral. We’d have to be payin’ till doomsday! Half the furniture in the house is damned near wore out already — an’ it still ain’ paid for!”

The moon rose and filled the child’s eyes.

“Can’t ask Aunt Rose
agin!
” Viola whispered. “She’s been too good to us already.”

“I’ll try the old man agin tamorra,” said Rutherford: “But what if we don’ have no big Chris’mas, we kin still eat somethin’! Chris’mas ain’ nothin’ but just a day, no way! Spend all that money, an’ then it’s over! I remember many a day when Chris’mas wasn’ nothin’ but just another day.”

“Kin you beat that, Babe!” Rutherford exclaimed the following morning.

He opened his eyes. Rutherford stood in front of the window.

“What?” asked Viola drowsily, raising herself up on her elbow.

“Look how it’s snowed!”

Viola looked out the window: “My, my! Ain’ it pretty!”

Amerigo slid out of bed and went to the window and looked out. Fresh white snow lay upon the roofs of the houses. Like the foam on a glass of beer … homebrew! It stood in round boulders upon the windowsill. Whiter … like a handful a soap suds!

Rutherford was buttoning up his coat. He turned up his collar, put on his gloves, took his little lunch pail, and made for the front door. When he opened it a cold blast of air shot up from the corridor.

“It’s really blowin’ — you hear me?”

“I hope it holds out till Chris’mas,” said Viola, settling back in bed.

“Hot damn!” Rutherford shivered. “I’m gonna have to shovel snow taday!” He closed the door firmly behind him and tramped down the stairs. Amerigo waited until the sound of his footsteps died down and tiptoed quietly down the corridor stair, shivering under Rutherford’s old Indian bathrobe. He stepped out onto the front porch.

He first caught sight of Rutherford’s tracks in the crisp glittering snow that had been blown onto the porch. He followed the tracks down the steps and up the alley, through the glow of lamplight. He could just make out Rutherford’s tiny form as he turned into the boulevard. It was dark except for the faint hoary blueness that crept into the sky and made its way unobtrusively down the alley, broken by intermittent flashes of light from the early trucks speeding by.

It could be late in the evening, he thought, still searching for signs of his father at the top of the alley. Or late at night. He stared hard at the boulevard. It was almost like it wasn’t there. And then he was surprised that the snow did not appear to be falling on the boulevard, that
the sight of the snow and the perception of its falling disappeared just beyond the arc of lamplight.

Gazing at the light, he was surprised that the snow was still falling. It’s been falling all the time! He watched as the flakes drifted, fell down by starts and fits, were driven down in oblique cascades from west to east that suddenly fell off as the wind dropped and floated down with the carefree violence of spring rain. And an instant later — self-consciously they stole into the hollows of Rutherford’s tracks until they almost disappeared —
Like they were never there
.

His lips trembled from the cold. His bare feet grew numb. A thin stream of snot trickled down from his nose. He licked it away with the tip of his tongue.

Just then Mr. Tom came out of his house in a big leather jacket and heavy boots, with his cap pulled down over his ears and his hands stuffed in his pockets. Amerigo followed his huge tracks down the alley, and at the same time he looked for Rutherford’s tracks up the alley. As they were gone, he followed Mr. Tom’s tracks down the alley, until the light ran out and darkness flowed into the mouth of the avenue where it exploded into balls of light that whizzed by, sparkling like gold teeth.

The snowflakes fell quietly, steadily, relentlessly. But now the wind rose suddenly and drove the snow to the east. It rained into the black windows of the empty house. It caught him squarely in the face and rushed between the lapels of his bathrobe and down his neck, melted and trickled down his chest until he was forced to check its descent by gathering the robe together in his hands.

“A-merigo Jones!” Viola cried when he entered the house several seconds later. She sat on the edge of the bed, her bare feet searching for her house slippers. “Are you c-r-a-z-y?” He peered through her thin nightgown. “Standin’ out on that cold porch — naked! With nothin’ on but that old bathrobe. An’ in your bare feet!”

“No’m.”

“You better
git
some shoes on your feet before I
kill
you!” She stood up, her supple body quivering beneath the transparent gown. “The next thing you know, you’ll be sneezin’ an’ catchin’ cold, or pneumonia or somethin’!” She moved swiftly toward the kitchen, her voice trailing behind her: “You ain’ got a bit a sense!”

“Yes’m.”

The way to school was streaked and cluttered with footprints and tracks from cars and trucks. Two dirty grooves about five inches deep and four inches wide and three feet apart cut a trail through the avenue as far as he could see. Near the spaghetti factory and in front of the movie theater, a pair of huge dappled-gray horses with gray manes and tails left steamy droppings and their hooves pawed the slippery pavement as they pulled the huge Glendale soda-water wagon across the Avenue at Harrison Street. The soft snow on the outer edges of the sidewalks was cluttered with dirty shovelings from the paths in front of the stores and restaurants and meat markets. The paths were strewn with ashes, rock salt, and sawdust.

He turned down Troost Hill. A pile of coal sprawled on the sidewalk in front of cousin Rachel’s house. He turned into the hollow where the snow, though swiftly melting, was more or less clean and undisturbed.