Such Sweet Thunder (41 page)

“ ’Mer’go loves ’Lectra! ’Mer’go loves ’Lectra!” Etta shouted first, then Leroy, Sammy, and the others took up the cry. Tommy grinned at him. He dropped Electra’s hand, but they cried even louder now. He pushed her away from him — too hard, for she fell to the ground and cut her hand on a stone. He started to help her to her feet, when a powerful impulse drew his attention to the classroom window above:

Miss Moore stood looking down upon him, a faint sad smile curling the corners of her thin purple lips.

And suddenly the sniggers of children filled his ears. Sunlight filled his eyes. She was pointing her finger to a seat on the front row

“Bal-dy! Bal-dy!…”

“That’s Frog-eyes, man!”

“Them’s eyes of the world! Tee! hee! hee!”

“Just
loves
’Lectra!”

“Who?”

“Eeeeeelec-tra! The crazy girl!”

He stalked into the building, took his seat, and did not lift his eyes from the deep black crevices between the floorboards that ran to the wall, and beyond.

“Stay out there, you two, till I call you!” Viola yelled from within the house. They hadn’t heard her enter.

“Aw-aw!” said Rutherford with a bitter grin, looking imploringly at him and then into the kitchen, unconsciously twisting the evening papers in his hands like the man at the poultry store when he wrings the neck of a chicken.

“She’s gonna kill me like that one a these days!” Rutherford was saying.

“Like what?”

“That gal’s gonna go an’ buy somethin’ on credit — an’ I’m gonna go stark ravin’ mad — an’ kill her, you,
an’
myself!”

Amerigo peered anxiously through the kitchen screen.

“Reeeeady!” Viola yelled.

“Yeah!” Rutherford replied, “How much did it cost?”

“Well, come on — if you comin’!”

They rushed into the front room. Amerigo arrived first. Viola was nowhere in sight.

“She must be hidin’!”

“Come on out an’ let us have a look at you, girl!” said Rutherford. They stood facing the front door. Presently the middle room door behind them squeaked on its hinges. They turned around.

“Hot dog!”

“Unh!” said Rutherford, speechless.

Viola stood in the frame of the middle room door, with the light from the windows flooding her face. She was freshly powdered, her lips were painted, and her eyes flashed with excitement. She unclasped the long silver fox fur that was draped across her shoulder by pressing a sheath under its throat, which caused its mouth to fly open and the tip of its tail to be released. She caught it before it could fall to the floor and deftly slung it over her arm and assumed a careless air of tempting nonchalance.

“Like the white women in the advertisements in the
Star
.”

“Ain’ that a killer-diller, Rutherford?” smiling ecstatically. She whirled on her toes. “Just too too divine! It’s the latest thing! An’ look how smooth an’ silky the fur is!” She extended the pelt for him to inspect. “You kin just
see
that it’s the
real thing!
An’ I got it at a
bargain!
Why just think in a year it’ll be
all paid for!
I got three new heads to do reg’ler, an’-an’ Susie wants me to make ’er a hat like mine, an’-an’-Eeeeee! I’m just tickled
pink!
You just wait till I come steppin’ out in
this!
Won’ them gals turn green! Old Patsy’s been stickin’ ’er nose up in the air about that imitation fur she got from R. C. But you just wait!” She popped her fingers, and her eyes blazed with a new fire:

“An’ — aw yeah! I almost forgot! Just guess what we gonna have for supper tanight!”

“What?” Amerigo exclaimed.

“Some good ol’ buffalo fish! Some good ol’ gol-den bantum corn on the cob! An’ corn bread, an’ buttermilk with Spanish onions an’ tamadas an’-an’ Whee! Rutherford, I’m so
ha
-ppy!” She threw her arms around his neck. Amerigo squeezed himself in between them, grasped them both around the waist, and laughed with a fearful agitation.

“This woman’s done gone an’ put us in debt for another
twenty
years!” freeing himself from her embrace. “Ol’ lady Mac ain’ even got furs like that — an’ ol’ man Mac’s got
seven
hotels!” He smiled ironically, scratching his head. He stared at the fur while Viola strolled up and down the room, posing in various attitudes on the sofa, on the chair, handling the fur with first one hand and then the other. Presently he leveled his gaze upon her. His expression was grave. She returned his gaze with a smile poised hazardously upon her face.

“How much did it cost?” he heard Rutherford ask, and his heart leaped into his throat.

Is he gonna kill ’er now?

“Amerigo,” said Viola coolly, “you go down an’ git the fish Mr. Derby promised. An’ don’ go lollygaggin’ ’cause you have to go to the store an’ git a pound a lard when you git back.”

“Yes’m.” He moved nervously toward the kitchen, not daring to look back. As he stepped out onto the back porch he heard the too cool, too calm, insistent aftertone of his father’s voice:

“How much did it cost?”

The pleasant smell of buffalo fish filled the air. Steam rose from the boiled potatoes, from the golden bantam corn, and from the corn bread that Viola cut into slices. Like a cake, he thought, avoiding the intensely thoughtful faces that silently presided over the evening meal.

“Hi there Joneses!” cried Miss Lucille, peeping through the screen door.

“Unh!” Rutherford exclaimed in mock indignation, “gittin’ so’s a man can’t even eat his supper no more without people stickin’ they nose in his plate!”

“Hi!” said Viola with a strained smile.

“Mom bought a new —” Ouch! he grabbed his shin. Viola cut him with a killing glance, and he clamped his mouth shut and stared into his plate.

“Tee! hee! hee!” Miss Lucille squeeled. “Big mouth! Comin’ out?”

“Yeah, girl,” said Viola, “we’ll be out in a little while.”

“Honey!” said Miss Lucille to Viola: “somebody sure gave you a rough deal: a polly parrot for a son an’ a Frankenstein for a husband!”

“You better
slide
on down them steps, woman,” said Rutherford with a malicious grin, “ ’cause I sure don’ see how you gonna
walk
down — not on them flat feet a yourn!”

“You just be glad you don’ have to carry me, muckle-head!”

“Muckle-head! You hear that, Babe? That woman didn’ git out a the kinnygarden till she was forty-five! An’ she come callin’
me
muckle-head!”

“You got me mixed up with your momma, boy!”

“Aw-aw!” said Rutherford.

“Eat your supper, there, boy!” said Viola. He was giggling hard. “By the time these two git through wisecrackin’ your food’ll be cold!”

“Cracker Jack baby!” he muttered to himself.

“What did you say, little niggah?” said Miss Lucille, sticking her nose against the screen.

“Nothin’!”

“Look out, there, girl!” said Rutherford. “I know you ain’ gonna punch no hole in my screen with that flat nose a yourn, but you might dent it just the same!”

“I’ll be waitin’ for you down on the porch, hot stuff! That is, if you don’
choke
to death stuffin’ your gut on that fish!”

Miss Lucille’s voice trailed away and blended with the mellow sounds of suppertime that issued from all the doors and windows and flowed into the yards, into the shoots and paths between the houses and out into the alley.

“Mom?”

“Boy, if you don’ stop crammin’ that food in your mouth! You’ll swallow one a them fish bones an’ choke to death!”

That gal’s gonna kill me like that one a these days!
He smiled self-consciously at Viola, carefully avoiding Rutherford’s glance. He took a sip of buttermilk.

“Mom? Kin I go over to Miss Minnie’s an’ git a piece of lemon marangue pie?”

“You bring me a piece, too!” said Rutherford.

He made a dash for the door.

“But come right back!” Viola called after him: “ ’Cause you got dishes to wash!”

“Aw Mom!”

He stood in the kitchen alone, his hands immersed in the gray soapy water, his fingers caressing the smooth round surface of a glass, the wave of voices rising and falling in the alley, washing upon the shores of his mind, which was filled with the image of all the black people, the brown and the beige ones, sitting on their porches in relaxed evening attitudes, their faces alive with animate flashes of humor that sparkled in their eyes, as their heads were flung back by the recoil of raucous laughter. He identified each of the multitimbered voices that blended in jovial conversation and spattered against the cobblestones like summer rain bubbling down the alley. Then it emptied into the avenue, where it picked up the noisy reflections of the neon lights that shone from the store windows and from the chrome-rimmed headlights of passing automobiles and from the streetcar that rolled past filled with still more faces emitting bursts of transient sound. He
felt
the streetlights come on! And blazen sharp trails of light along the dangerous edges of broken glass strewn among the cobblestones.

Meanwhile, from the top of the alley came the steady din of dangerous traffic speeding east and west along the great Admiral Boulevard — more quietly now that five o’clock had come and gone and the sun had left only a faint trace of crimson, blending into a mauve rind of sky that lay just above the treetops to the west.

He could hear and see it all, as he stared vacantly at the faded flowered patterns on the wall before him.

Days getting longer, he thought. Days getting hotter and then it will be summer and then — God damn! Aaaaaw! Hot dog! God damn! He laughed to himself, thrilling to a vague feeling of wickedness as his mind was enveloped by the sad-sweet-long-lazy-lost-impatient feeling that was summer, when school was out and the playground stood empty and the bell was silent. In the scorching sun and in the shade, dripping ice and lemonade. Ice cream and soda-pop, and rubber-gun fights in the wet shade of porches and basements. Amid the pricky bushes on the hill at the top of the alley and in the gray-dusty lot next to old man Whitney’s house, the sanctified church often pitched a tent at night and sang and shouted and beat tambourines and rolled on the ground to the beat of clapping hands, stamping feet, and the rolling bass of an old out-of-tune stand-up piano. The white people drove up in cars from the great Admiral Boulevard and gave them money once, twice, three and four times, until they couldn’t get any more when they took up the collection.

He thought of the quiet hot afternoons when he had to take a nap on the pallet in the front room darkened by the drawn window shades
through which brilliant points of light appeared. On Sundays Viola and Rutherford went swimming at the bathhouse on Eighteenth Street, or over in Kansas with Miss Ada and Mr. Willard and Harrison, his brother who looked just like him: Twins! Their daddy was a b-i-g fat man who could lie on the water without swimming and read a book. Mr. Chainey, and T. C., who used to be a lifeguard. Rutherford was teaching Viola how to swim and Amerigo couldn’t go with them because he was too little.

A sad feeling swelled his cheeks into a pouting attitude. I don’t care, I’m going to Aunt Nadine’s where Grandma is!

The quiet flowery street opened up before him and his eyes took in the soft landscape bulging with tufted blue grass spangled with golden dandelions and clover. He gathered a bouquet of the soft fuzzy purple flowers and ran home to Grandma Veronica, who sat on the front porch, staring blindly out at the sun from the shade cast by the big cottonwood tree.

“Look Gran’ma! They’re purple! I got ’um for you!”

He smiled at the thought of the smile upon her face.

“Boy! Ain’t you through yet?”

“No’m.”

“Listen,” lowering her voice cautiously, “I got somethin’ to tell you: When somethin’ happens in this house — no matter what it is — you keep it to yourself, you hear? Fixin’ to tell Lucille about them furs! What me or your daddy does ain’ nobody’s business. The first thing you know she’ll go down an’ buy a cheap imitation pair just like ’um! Like she did that red dress a mine. She looked it over good, saw just how it was made, an’ then went downtown an’ bought one
just like
it. Not a little like it —
just like it!
Nothin’ makes me saltier than a copycat! Now you mind what I tell you, you keep your mouth shut, you hear?”

“Yes’m.”

“If you don’ hurry up, it’s gonna be time for you to go to bed pretty soon.”

“Yes’m.”

She went to the toilet. He heard the discreet sound of paper tearing, followed by the flushing of the flush-box, the gentle creaking of bones, then the door swung open and she stepped into the kitchen straightening her dress.

She had to pee, he thought. He tried to suppress the thought when their glances met the instant before she stepped toward the sink and
made a sign for him to move the dishpan so she could wash her hands. He wondered why she had to wash her hands when he couldn’t see any dirt.
Why you have to wash your hands an’ face just to go to bed!… an’ on Sunday mornin’ when you just had a bath on Sad’dy night!

A sudden loud whistle burst in upon his thoughts. It came from the yard.