Such Sweet Thunder (37 page)

The driver slammed the cab door, and then joined his companion who was already in the driver’s seat. He gunned the motor and the ambulance shot up the alley, leaving the whining scream of the siren in its wake. The crowd dispersed in silence. He ascended the front stair.

“That’s all right, baby,” said Mrs. Derby when he reached the porch, “I got enough kindlin’ to last till tammara a bit.”

“It’s a shame he had to die like that!” Aunt Lily was saying. He looked questioningly at her. “All alone, without a friend in the world.”

“That’s-that’s sssome-somethin’ every-bbbody gggot-gotta do by th-theyself, Li-lily!” Unc said from within the house. She shut the door. Mrs. Derby shut her door.

The angular bars of light that had glided obliquely through the doors and onto the porches, down the steps leading to the alley, and over the cobblestones suddenly vanished one by one, exploding into bursts of sound — Boom! Boom-Boom! — emitted by banging doors. The alley was again quiet, except for the sound of the wind.

“Come on an’ git your supper.” He looked up into the face of his father, felt the pressure of his strong hand upon his shoulder, and they moved silently up through the dark corridor together.

They sat down to the evening meal of sauerkraut, boiled potatoes, and wieners. He mumbled his blessing: “Dear Lord, bless this food we’re about to eat,” thinking: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.…

“Miss Sadie said he looked like he was ’sleep,” Viola was saying.

“His eyes was open!” Amerigo said, but she seemed not to hear him.

“Imagine, somebody freezin’ to
death!
—
all night!
— in that old house. Right
next door!
”

“Prob’ly starved to death,” said Rutherford.

He tried to imagine Old Jake in the empty house. He peered down through the caved-in floor into the cellar. “
His eyes was open
.”

“Come on, ’Mer’go!” Tommy was yelling from the opposite corner.

He stepped irritably from the curb and approached the vast frontier of the new way to school, a way untrodden by the feet of his father and mother, his uncles Ruben and Sexton, his aunts Edna, Ruth, Pearl, Nadine, and Fanny, his grandmothers Veronica and Sarah, or his grandfathers Rex and Will — a way that the reverend and Mr. T. Wellington Harps would never go.

“Look out!” Tommy cried. A loud jagged sound whizzed past his face and bathed him in a backwash of cold air that caused his eyes to fill with water and the loose ends of his unbuttoned jacket to burst away from his immobile body.

“You gonna git
killed!
” Tommy exclaimed, holding the lapel of his jacket in his clenched fist. “Didn’t you see that truck? You better learn to look where you goin’!”

He walked blindly across the street.

At the corner of Independence and Forest he paused in front of a candy store window. He gazed at the thick pulpy Indian Chief tablets with the big Indian head crowned with feathers of black and gold against a background of red. “
Pontiac!
” he heard Rutherford say, eyeing the penny pencils and the long yellow ones for a nickel. They lay next to the orderly bunches of pen-point holders — black, blue, red, yellow, and green. Fat round A’s, B’s, and C’s spread out over the ruled spaces of his mind and aligned themselves in marching formation along the edges of the deep black crevices between the floorboards of St. John’s and advanced through the breach at Independence and Troost and overtook him at Forest Avenue where they were joined by legions of wineballs upon which grains of sugar glistened like stars!

“You gonna be late, man!” Tommy shouted from the middle of the next block. He and the others cut up through the ravine of a rather steep hill.

“Come on up this way!” Turner yelled over his shoulder, but he followed the directions his father had given him down the avenue to the corner.

Suddenly he heard a bell ringing like that of a g-r-e-a-t b-i-g alarm clock coming from far away! He looked anxiously down the street. There was no one in sight. One solitary cloud stood motionless in the sky.

A leaf fell from the big cottonwood tree in the churchyard. There’s the church! Tired, panting for air, he paused to catch his breath. His heart pounded in his ears. There was no sign of the schoolhouse. But then he spied the upper stories of a strange and yet familiar redbrick building with many windows, standing earnestly in the morning sunlight.

Finally he reached the stone wall bordering the playground. He beheld the Stars and Stripes waving listlessly in the breeze.

Boom!
the big front door banged against the back wall. He stepped inside:
Boom!
the door closed heavily behind him:
Boom! Boom! Boom!
the sound echoing down through the corridors. The steps whined noisily as he climbed the broad wooden stairs. He stepped onto the clean planks that ran side by side the full length of the hall.

“Boy — your momma was late every day!”
Rutherford exclaimed above the din of voices that poured through the transoms above the doors ranged along the hall:
“An’
lie?
Oooo-whee! She could really tel l’um!”

“Well, you’ve managed to be late the
first
day!” said a voice.

He looked up into the narrow mustard-brown face of a middle-aged man with short-cropped iron-gray hair and small brown eyes that
blinked nervously, causing his thin, slightly hooked nose to wrinkle in the indentation just above the bridge.

“Well — you’ve managed to be late the
first
day! Tisct-tisct,” sucking the air through the narrow gap between his front teeth in two quick bursts of menacing sound.

“I-I —”

“Come with me!”

He followed him down the long hall. Pictures hung upon the cream-colored walls, mostly of bearded old men with bushy mustaches and fiery expressions in their eyes, as if they were really mad about something! Some of the men in the pictures were white and some were black, and in the very center of the wall there was a picture of George Washington.
“The father of the country!”
Tommy had declared.

They came to a door.

“Wait here.”

You have to stay after school, he thought, and maybe get a whipping!

“If you hit that boy one more time — I’ll …”

“You may go in and find your seat,” the man was saying, while he looked up into his splotched purple face with awe.

He stepped into the room and a flood of warm autumnal sunshine filled his face. He saw the silhouette of a woman sitting erect at a desk, hands clasped, in the far corner of the room beside one of four large windows. He timidly advanced, and was suddenly surprised by a wave of sniggering voices that rose upon the air. Half blinded by sunlight, he gazed upon an orderly crowd of black, brown, and beige faces, all of which were about as big as his own, sitting wide-eyed behind orange lacquered desks arranged in rows that extended the full length and breadth of the room.

His glance took in the clean blackboard, which was bordered by a thin chalk line upon which the A-B-Cs were written in large fat letters and small fat letters.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ — gimme! He imaginatively stretched out his hand and collected Unc’s nickel.

“What is your name?” the woman was asking.

“She was tall and thin lookin’,” he replied to Rutherford’s inquiry that evening as to how Miss Moore was looking these days: “with a lot a powder on. Her face looked purple. Like Miss McMahon’s when … But ’er eyes wasn’t Irish.”

“What you mean, Irish?”

“Blue.”

“Where’d you git the idea that all Irish people got blue eyes, boy?”

“They was real dark brown — almost black!… ’Cause they is!”

“Are!”
Viola corrected.

“Are — what?” Rutherford asked.

“Irish eyes. An’ they was black almost, like Aunt Tish’s, an’ she looked kinda like ’er, too, only ’er hair’s long like Gran’ma’s, but black instead of silver —”

“You think Momma’s hair is silver?”

“Ain’ it? Gran’ma’s got
good
hair, prettiest hair in the w-h-o-l-e w-o-r-l-d!”

“Will you listen to this joker, Babe?” Rutherford grinned with apparent satisfaction.

“Him an’ the
whole world!
” said Viola. “
My
momma had pretty hair, too! Even if it was nappy, but when it was just washed, it usta shine like nobody’s business!”

“She ain’ lyin’, Amerigo!”

“Miss Moore’s was wound ’round the top a ’er head with a big pretty comb — an’ b-i-g hairpins!”

“What is your name?” the woman was asking.

“Amerigo,” looking self-consciously at the faces of the children. Their eyes shone like dog- and cat-eyes in the bright rays of sunlight.

“Amerigo — what?”

The faces grinned, lips curved into peach-, prune-, and plum-colored crescents filled with big white milk teeth. Sniggers burst involuntarily through their noses.

“Jones!”
he blurted out, unconsciously drawing himself erect. The words resounded with a booming resonance that frightened him.

The woman stood up, her figure tall and gaunt under her soft tower of hair. “Take your seat here,” the woman was saying.

His eyes followed the direction indicated by her hand, the third seat in the front row. The polished nail of her forefinger glistened in the sun.

“Like a magic wand. Like a queen! White as a white woman’s, but she’s a Negro just the same!”

“Sit down, son,” said the woman gently.

“Unh!” said Rutherford wearily as he entered the kitchen at five-thirty on a Monday evening. “The I-talians done moved out an’ the apartment on the first floor’s empty!”

Just then Viola’s face appeared in the frame of the kitchen window. Rutherford stepped to the door, saying, “Git your daddy his house shoes. My corns is
cryin’ — you hear me
?”

“Yessir.”

“Hi,” Rutherford said to Viola as she entered the door.

“Hi,” said Viola, grunting under her heavy load. Rutherford took the sack from her arms and she sank into the chair near the sink, rubbing her wrists.

“Hi, Mom,” he said, handing Rutherford his house shoes. Then he took off his mother’s shoes and fetched Rutherford’s old pair of house shoes for her. She nodded thanks. Her face was ashen from the cold, thawing now in the warm damp air of the kitchen, the tip of her nose a deep purple color.

“The whiskey’s gone! Did you notice?” Rutherford asked, stretching out his hands before the oven.

“I noticed it when I was comin’ up,” said Viola. “My
arms!
” still rubbing them.

“Luggin’ ’em groc’ries is a mess, all right!” said Rutherford sympathetically.

“They feel like they gonna break off! It’s a low-down dirty shame!”

“What’s that?” asked Rutherford, reaching for his paper.

“That you have to buy groc’ries
all the way out there
where the rich white people live —
millionaires!
— an’
lug ’um
all the way through town on a crowded streetcar just to save a few lousy pennies on a can a this or a pound a that! An’ do you think any a those white men would git up! An’ let a — let you sit down? Honey, they watch you loaded down to the bricks an’ don’t even bat a eye!”

“Yeah, it’s tough, all right,” said Rutherford. “What’s this?” noticing now a clean white envelope on the kitchen table. Amerigo looked nervously out the window.

“What is it?” Viola asked. She looked worredly at him and handed the note that she withdrew from the envelope to Rutherford.

“What?” he exclaimed, “late for school
agin?
Me an’ your momma workin’ an’-an’ damned near freezin’ to death to feed you an’ all you gotta do is go to a nice warm schoolhouse an’ be on time — an’ you can’t even do that! What’s the matter? Huh? Huh?” Amerigo looked at the floor. “
I
know what’s the matter: daydreamin’! You worse’n your momma was. You gotta
go
some to be late more’n your momma was! Got your head in the clouds
all the time!
You don’ see nothin’! Don’ hear nothin’! What do you
think
about
all
the time? Huh? Why — you
damned near late
every day!
An’ come bringin’ home a M on your grade card last time! An’ you so smart an’ all that … an’ in arithmetic! I was one a the best li’l niggahs in arithmetic in the w-h-o-l-e school! Whasn’t I, Babe?”

“You was good, all right. I wasn’t so bad, myself!”

“Yeah,” said Rutherford, “an’-an’ you wanna go to
college!
Ain’ that a
killer!
” His face grew serious. “Amerigo?”

“Yessir.”

“
Look at me
when I talk to you!”

Startled by the violent tone of his father’s voice, he snapped his head erect and looked into his face.

“Yessir.” His lips trembled visibly, tears ran from the corners of his eyes, and a lump rose in his throat.

“I-don’t-want-to-have-to-tell-you-’bout-bein’-late-for-school-no-more! You hear? Do you hear me? No more!”

“Yessir,” he whispered. “Yessir, yessir, yessir.”

“Yessir,” he had replied to Mr. Grey’s angry command that morning, a little while after the last bell had rung:

“Come with me, young man!” his face twitching nervously.

“Mr. Grey,” Miss Moore had protested, laying her arm protectively upon his shoulder, “don’t you think it would be better to let —”

“That will be all, Miss Moore!” said Mr. Grey.

“But, Mr. Grey, I —”

“Young man, come with me!” He grabbed him roughly by the arm. Miss Moore’s face turned purple. “Mr. Johnson! Somebody get Mr. Johnson!”

“Yes, sir!” replied Mr. Johnson, who suddenly emerged from the little crowd of teachers who had gathered in the hall. He carried a long push-broom in his hand.

“Yessir?” smiling slyly.

“We’ll have to teach this young man a lesson!” said Mr. Grey. “What would you do about a young man who is
always
late for school?” He spoke over his shoulder, as he raced down the hall, dragging Amerigo along with him.

“Let me see, now,” said Mr. Johnson, rushing to keep pace with Mr. Grey. “I don’t rightly know just what I’d do at the moment!” He smiled and rubbed the smooth jet-black surface of his pomaded hair with the tips of his fingers.