Such Sweet Thunder (44 page)

“How
is
old Allie?” T. C. asked. “I ain’ seen that gal in a coon’s age! She’s a cute li’l sleepy-eyed gal!”

“Her brains is ’sleep, too!” chuckled Miss Lucille.

“She’s all right,” said Viola. “Just the same as ever. Worryin’ ’erself over Doris …”

“Yeah, well …” said T. C., picking up his thought: “All them. An’ them big-shot doctors and lawyers out south. You got to have
class
these days! Even the preachers is gittin’ hip. Ain’ no more a that bein’
called
crap — an’ openin’ up a storefront with a few hus’lers in the choir! Naw naw! Them days is goin’. Am I right, Rutherford?”

“Right as rain!”

“Yes sir! Now you got to be educated! Got to put-that-jive-on-the-line! Without all that jumpin’ an’ shoutin’. These new little niggahs like ’Mer’go want talkin’ — lecturin’ — to!”

“Lawd! You young ’uns sure got problems, ain’t you!” Mrs. Derby exclaimed in a quietly mocking tone, shooting an invisible stream of snuff juice into a can filled with water that stood beside her chair.

“Amerigo’s gonna be the president!” said Rutherford with a sly grin. “What’s that got to do with art? That little niggah’d better be studyin’ how to keep his poppa out a war!”

“Well, so long, Jackson!” T. C. was saying.

“So long, man. Take it easy!” Rutherford replied.

“I got to do it, man!”

“Wait a minute there, Thomas C.,” said Miss Lucille. “I’ll walk you a piece.”

“Take it easy, there,” said Viola.

“So long, Vi!” said T. C. “We’ll have to open up a keg a nails agin soon!”

“Unh! — will you listen to that joker!” Rutherford exclaimed. “We prob’ly won’ see this cat no more till doomsday!”

“Bye!”

“Bye …”

“S’long …”

In the darkness of the middle room Rutherford was saying:

“Like I was saying … I want you to look —”

“Sssssh!” whispered Viola, “he’ll hear you.”

“I want you to look nice just as much as
you
do. But here we are scufflin’ an’ scrapin’ to barely git by, to have somethin’ to eat an’ a roof over our head. People barely kin work agin an’
you
, buyin’ furs! Shit! You scare me to death! No kiddin’! For me to do somethin’, I have to think about it a long time. An’ then I’m half scaired somethin’ll go wrong! But
you!
You do the impossible just like it was the most natural thing in the
world!” Silence. Then: “Nobody, nobody in his right mind’d buy fox furs on what we make. E-v-e-r since I kin remember I been payin’ for livin’ I done already done! Or borrowin’ for the livin’ I’m doin’! Just as soon as we git one bill paid — I’ll be damned if you don’ go an’ put the man’s hand in our pocket
agin!
”

“I’ll be payin’ most of it myself!” Viola whispered. “I
know
you can’t afford to buy all the nice things that other women have on the sal’ry you make. That’s why I work! So that you an’ me an’ the baby — all of us — kin have some a the things we couldn’ have otherwise. If we waited till we
could
afford somethin’ we never would buy somethin’ new! At least we kin have ever’thing the rest of ’um have — an’ — an’ git a little fun out a life!”

“What I care what the rest of ’um have!”

“Sssssssh!”

“
Be damned
what the rest of ’um have! It’d be different if we was borrowin’ money to pay for somethin’ to eat. But for
furs!
”

“Mister President?”

He stirred sluggishly.

“President Jones! Let’s git up an’ git with it! It’s time to git ready to go to the art gallery an’ learn all about how to run the country. Now listen! You awake!”

“Yessir.”

“All right. Now I heated some water for you, an’ laid out your clothes. I want you to git up an’ wash your face an’ hands good. An’ don’ forgit your neck! An’ put on your clean underwear an’ your white shirt, your Sund’y shoes. I done already shined ’um for you. Here’s the quarter for the bus an’ four bits to keep in your pocket — in case you have to buy somethin’.

“I know you gonna act like a gen’leman an’ listen good to all they tellin’ you, so I don’ have to tell you that. Ah got to go now, so have a nice time an’ take it easy, you heah?”

“Yessir,” he nodded from the side of the bed, watching his father go through the door. He leaned out the window and watched him start up the alley, taking long strides through the deep snow. He tried to discover his tracks, but the burnished cobblestones yielded not a sign.

He tiptoed into the middle room and crawled into bed beside his mother.

“Uhm,” she grunted irritably, opened her eyes, and looked at him.

He turned restlessly on his back.

“I’m gonna make you git up in a minute!” said Viola.

He looked at the Indian maiden upside down, at the disciples sitting around Jesus in the picture over the bed. Their figures were elongated, and their heads rested on the bottom of the picture frame, while their outstretched hands seemed to push the table against the ceiling.

He turned on his side in order to have a look sideways. The weight of his shoulder pressed against Viola’s arm.

“Git up now!” she commanded. “Shoot! You too big for this jive. You ain’ no baby no more!”

He lay very still.

“Boy?”

The word echoed throughout his consciousness:

“I’m a
boy!
” He carefully stretched himself out to his full length until his toes touched his mother’s toes!

“What time is it?” asked Viola, suddenly sitting up in bed. The shoulder strap of her nightgown fell off her shoulder and exposed her left breast. “You better git out a this bed. You got things to do!” She adjusted her shoulder strap.

He stood in the kitchen door, facing the brilliant bar of oblique sunlight alone. The streetcar ground hotly up the avenue. She’s at work now, he thought, and tried to discover within the shady depths of the elm trees in Miss Minnie’s yard the big rich apartment building with the big red neon sign burning the word
B-I-A-R-R-I-T-Z
into a night sky filled with falling snow.

The art gallery! A sudden spark of happiness flickered in his mind. The great building loomed up out of the darkness. The brittle snow crunched beneath his feet, as he spread the thick lather of soap upon his face and neck.

That’s the prettiest house in the whole world!
He put on his fresh white shirt, and then the iron-pressed trousers of his Sunday suit.

“An’ don’ forgit to grease your legs!” he heard Viola say just before she dashed out the door. “You don’ want your legs lookin’ all rusty!”

He rubbed Vaseline on his legs, and then put on his shoes and socks. He combed and brushed his hair three times, slicked it down with Murray’s, and put Rutherford’s stocking cap on and made a knot in the back and rolled it up till it fit his head real tight, the way Rutherford did. After he had finished his Post Toasties, he took the skullcap off and admired the tiny wavelets of hair that rippled over
his skull in the front room mirror. Then he carefully put on his cap, cocked it on the side the way Rutherford had showed him, the way it was in the photograph in the album where at age three he stood beside Rutherford dressed in a light tweed double-breasted overcoat and cap just like his father’s. He stared his face out of focus in an effort to measure the time since he was three. It resounded deftly within the vast dark gray regions of memory in a volley of colorful explosions, in bursts of black and white interspersed with big red numbers: Nine! Eight! Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three!
Boooooom! BOOMmmmmmmm! BOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!

“Boy!” Viola had exclaimed.

He stepped out the door into the sunlight that flooded the front porch, over the clean spot where … He unconsciously looked at it, even though it was gone. Under the spell of a strange elated feeling he descended the stair and made his way through the cellarlike coolness of the shoot.…

He swaggered proudly up the avenue, carefully avoiding the rocks and bottles and tin cans. Tommy and the others were half a block ahead of him. They called out to him, but he pretended not to hear. He walked alone.

“Look at that s-h-a-r-p little niggah!” said Mr. Hicks who used to sell popcorn at the show, just as he passed the big frame house where Aunt Pearl.… He walked straighter and held his head higher, unconsciously obeying Viola’s admonition to: “Hold your head up an’ walk like a man!”

“Hi, Tony!” said Miss Mamie.

She goes with dago-Sam at The Blue Moon.

“Mornin’, Miss Mamie!” He tipped his cap.

“Ain’ that nice! A
real
gen’leman!” she exclaimed to a passerby, a tall tawny red-eyed man with greasy overalls looking about him as though he had lost something. He looked distractedly at Amerigo for an instant, scratching his uncombed head with a huge dirty hand, and then continued his search — somewhere down between the cracks in the dirty asphalt street.

Just as he reached Troost Avenue a boy about his own age and dressed up as he walked awkwardly down the hill, as though he felt a little uncomfortable in his Sunday suit on a Friday morning.

That’s the new boy.

“H-h-h-hi!” he smiled a broad smile, bearing a set of white rabbit teeth, which exaggerated the size of his mouth, so that his round peanut head seemed too small and his skinny neck too long.

Listen to that little niggah stutter! he exclaimed to himself, barely
able to suppress the impulse to laugh. He eyed the big black mole over his upper lip. His name was Isaac. Amerigo was warmed by his sincere, anxious, and somewhat fearful smile. Something about Isaac reminded him of Toodle-lum, and yet he was different. He studied his impression, as Isaac drew nearer, remembering the first time he had seen him, last First Sunday when he had joined the church with his mother. Her name’s Mona … moan.

“A be-u-ti-ful black woman, I wanna tell you!” he heard Rutherford exclaim. “Like a African queen! An’ dig-na-fied, Jack!”

“Come on,” Amerigo said.

“O-o-o-o-kay,” said Isaac gratefully.

They marched together up the avenue until they came to the corner of Independence Avenue and Pacific Street, where they joined the unavoidable stream of children bound for school.…

“Mom?” Viola was just stepping into the kitchen that evening.

“Hi, baby!”

“Mom? Kin-I-go-to-the-show? Tommyan’Turneran’them’s goin’ …”

“Ain’t you forgot somethin’?”

“No’m.”

“Seems to me you have.”

“What?”

“You done got to be such a big shot that you can’t say good evenin’ to somebody when they speak to you? I see the art gallery ain’ improved your manners a bit!”

“No’m.” He fidgeted uneasily on the orange crate.

“No’m — what!”

“Evenin’.”

“That’s better.”

“Kin I go?”

“I don’ know ’bout you goin’ all the way down on Twelfth Street at night. Better wait till your daddy comes home an’ ask him.”

“But Mom!”

“You heard what I said! I don’ want to have to tell you agin. What’s come over you this evenin’? Well, how did it go!”

“What?”

“What! Boy!”

Boy.

“Boy!
I
believe you losin’ your black mind! The
art
gallery! You went, didn’t you?”

“Yes’m.”

“Better take off them clothes before you git ’um dirty.”

He moved dreamily through the kitchen, apparently oblivious to the woman who stood at the drainboard taking groceries out of a brown paper sack.

“An’ hurry up! Your daddy’ll be home in a minute. An’ straighten up that front room. It looks a mess! I don’ know what’s got into you taday.… the house all dirty … an’ look at these dishes! Standin’ all over the table!”

He made his way into the middle room where the sun lay aslant the bed. He absentmindedly took off his clothes and hung them up and put on his everyday pants and shoes and shirt, and then proceeded to straighten up the front room, and then the middle room. He was just putting the dust mop away when the front door banged.

Boom!

“All-
right
, Viola Jones!” Rutherford exclaimed as he strode into the house. “Them white folks like to
killed
me
taday
, you hear me! How’s the president!” Amerigo smiled at him, and he looked at his father with the eyes of a stranger as he stepped into the kitchen.

“I don’ know
how
he is!” said Viola. “Must be excited, I guess. I haven’ been able to git a word out of ’im. Come home an’ the house’s all dirty — that ain’ like him at
all!
If
that’s
what art’s gonna do to ’im, he better stay home from now on!”

“Unh!” Rutherford exclaimed: “What happened, Pres?” He rolled up his sleeves in order to wash his hands.

“Nothin’.”

“
Nothin’!
You go way out to the art gallery — such a high-class joint — minglin’ with all the whities an’ all you kin say is nothin’? Did you have a good time?”

“Yessir.”

Rutherford dried his hands. Viola poured the hash into the bowl and set the steaming biscuits on the table.

“Take the tea out a the icebox, babe,” she said to Rutherford, and when he had placed it on the table they sat down.

“Well, how many of you went?” Rutherford asked.

“Just our class an’ Miss Fortman, on a big bus all to ourself. An’ we didn’ go the way the streetcar goes, we went another way till we got to the station, an’ then we kept straight on out till we got to the end of
the Troose line an’ then turned in a street for a while an’ then up a path till we come to the art gallery. An’, Dad, kin I go to the show? Tommyan’Turneran’em’s goin’. Mom said I kin if it’s all right with you?”

“What that got to do with
art?
”

“Aw Dad, kin I?”

“I said it’s up to you —” said Viola to Rutherford, “but I ain’ too hot on him goin’ all the way down on Twelfth Street all by hisself with a bunch a little ragamuffins.”

“Aw, Viola, that ain’ no place to go! When
I
was that little joker’s age I could go to the end of the
world
by myself!”

He ate halfheartedly, picking at the strange food on the plate with the faded blue flowers. He stared at the chip on the edge where he had banged it against the sink, and suddenly the fork felt strange in his hand. He sipped his iced tea. His head back, his eyes wide open, he stared past the vague oval form that was his father’s head through the screen door beyond which lay the amber evening. It made the red bricks of the houses look velvet, and the whiteness of Mrs. Crippa’s porch look silver where the huge angular shadow from Miss Minnie’s house cut a deep wedge into the upper story, while the creamy-white globe of light shining through her kitchen curtain took on the appearance of a little “…  moon! When it’s reeeeeal big and a real thin cloud goes over it. Like angel hair on the Chris’mas tree when …”