Such Sweet Thunder (63 page)

“She
is!
We’re just friends, that’s all.”

“Unh! You
is
a fool! Wastin’ all your time talkin’ to somebody
else’s
girl an’ ain’ gittin’ nothin’ out a it. Better git yourself a girl a your own. What do you talk about — till twelve o’clock at night?”

“Life!”

“Unh!” he grinned, “what do
you
know about
life
, little niggah, ain’ never missed a meal since you was born! Git me that paper, boy!”

He fetched the paper for his father and resumed his meal in a frustrated silence, hovering on the periphery of his chosen circle of friends
who were all held together by the song. An irrepressible sigh stuck in his throat and prevented his biscuit from sliding down.

Better git you a girl a your own!
said Rutherford’s voice, and he made a mental review of the faces his own age, the faces from R. T. Bowles. He ran toward this one and that one, but no sooner than he arrived than they divided themselves into pairs that whispered and giggled intimately, noses touching, lips touching, arms locked in hipgrinding embraces within the aura of tiny red lights — rose and blue — burning weakly in smoke-filled rooms, to the pulsating rhythm of the slow sad song, inflaming his sensibility with a desire and shame that dissolved in the hot rushing waters of disgust.

Better git you a girl of your own!

All of a sudden it sounded like Tommy’s voice.

I don’ care
answered another voice, and he heard the needle pop and crack in the whirring groove of the phonograph, and a tall melodious articulate voice declare:

“If I — ee diddidn’t care-eh … more than words ca-an say — ee …”

I don’t care! Anyway, the kind of girl I want … I want a girl who … who …

The overwhelming import of this speculation forced the soggy biscuit down his throat, and he looked up in time to hear his father exclaim: “Unh!” behind the pages of the
Star
.

“What?” Viola asked.

“Looks like things gittin’ tough! Every day now, you don’ see nothin’ but headlines ’bout military conferences an’ stuff. Germany’s makin’ pacts an’ treaties. Looks like Europe’s choosin’ sides before the big bang!”

“Well,” said Viola, “I sure hope
we
don’ git mixed up in that mess!”

“We all goin’ when the wagon comes,” said Rutherford gravely. “I’ll tell you one thing: If England goes, we goin’, too! Ain’ never been a war in history when we didn’ help England!”

“The Revolutionary War!” Amerigo said with a facetious twinkle in his eyes.

“Aw, li’l niggah — you know what I mean!”

“Ne-gro!”

“Listen, li’l niggah, you don’ go correctin’ your poppa, you heah?”

“He’s
right!
” Viola exclaimed with an amused grin. “That’s what he’s git-getting an education for! Aw say, I almost forgot to ask you, how’s ol’ T. C. doin’?”

“That’s a cryin’ shame!” said Rutherford, shaking his head. “That joker throwin’ away that good job at the station. He didn’ say nothin’
’bout that. An’ then he went to workin’ on the
road
gang, layin’ track! He thinks he’s so strong! ’Em ties like to
killed
’im! An’ now he’s half sick — an’ won’ go to the doctor. Teet’ all fallin’ out.”

“He’s got such beautiful teeth!” Viola said sadly.

“Yeah … I spoke to ol’ man Mac for ’im an’ he kin start to work with me Mond’y. We’re shorthanded as it is. It’s hard to keep somebody with that measly sal’ry the ol’ man’s payin’.”

“Did you ask ’im ’bout that raise?”

“I ain’ had a chance yet, the ol’ man bought a new hotel an’ it’s keepin’ ’im busy. An’ you know ol’ lady Studhoss ain’ gittin’ up off a
nothin’
unless the ol’ man says so.”

Amerigo rose from the table.

“Eh … I’m goin’ now, Mom.”

“Put on your coat, it’s cold outside.”

“Aw Mom!”

“Put on your coat!” Rutherford said.

“Yessir.”

He put on his coat and dashed out into the street.…

Oh Skylark! have you anything to say to me? he sang, his ears filled with the dulcet intonations of Billy Eckstine: Won’t you tell me where my love can be? Is there a meadow in the mist, where someone’s waiting to be kissed? He scanned the meadows spreading out under the misty autumn evening and the splinters of light that escaped from the shaded windows of the houses he passed. Skylark! Have you seen a valley green with spring, where my heart can go a-jour-ney-ing?

Through the whirl of eventful days crowded with painful movements, which fell to the feet of Friday night:

“Hey! hey! no more classes till Mond’y!”

“Goin’ to the pajama party?”

“Where?”

“At Baby Miller’s down on Fourteenth Street.”

“You goin’?”

“You
know
I’m goin’! All them fine mellah chicks?”

“Can anybody go?”

“Aw man, you too nice. A pajama party ain’ nothin’ for
squares!
”

That evening after supper:

“Mom?”

“What?”

“Can I go to a party over on Fourteenth Street at Baby Miller’s house?”

“You invited?”

“
Anybody
can go!”

“I guess so, but be home by eleven o’clock!”

“Aw, Viola!” Rutherford exclaimed, “to be home at eleven o’clock he’s gotta leave at
ten
— an’
you
know a party ain’ even
warm
till it’s almost over. You be in here by twelve o’clock, boy — but I mean twelve, you heah!”

“Yessir. Mom?”

“Now what?”

“You got any change? Just in case I have to buy somethin’, or break my leg and have to get a taxi?”

“Boy, you gittin’ expensive! You better get yourself a little job so you kin earn your own spendin’ money. Here.” She gave him fifty cents.

“That ain’ no lie, Amerigo,” Rutherford said. “You ain’ no baby no more, you gittin’ to be a
man
.”

His senses quickened to the word
man
.

“You
always
goin’ to the show, an’ to dances an’ parties — football games an’ stuff. It ain’ gonna hurt you to earn a little money to treat your girlfriends —”

“I haven’t got a girlfriend — and I’m not
going
to have one, till I find the right one. One that’s intelligent, with good manners, and I’m realleh in love with her. And then I’m going to marry her — after I finish college and get to be somebody and have enough money for a home with nice furniture and everything. A real lady who plays the piano, maybe,” and has red hair he thought, with snow shining in it, in a blue uniform with a white blouse and a real verreh white collar and pretty teeth and soft brown skin with a gold chain around her neck, copper in the evening sunlight, and tall and straight with polished fingernails like a queen! His heart throbbed with emotion as the images of all the women he had known fused into one overpoweringly beautiful apparition that shone with celestial splendor.

“You gonna have a hard time finding the kind a woman you want.” Viola said thoughtfully.

“You better git out a here, if you goin’,” Rutherford said.

Sharp as a tack in his Sunday suit, he shifted into first with a swagger, and then into second on the wing of a song and then — breezed on down to Fourteenth Street.

Someday she’ll come along, the girl I love! And she’ll be big and strong, the girl I love, And when she comes my way —

Rrrrrrrring!

The door opened. He stepped into a warm corridor softly illuminated by a rose light that almost obscured the coats, hats, pants, shirts, blouses that hung on hooks around the walls. A tall slender large-eyed woman looked down at him. “Come on in, son, and take off your clothes,” she said, and disappeared into the adjoining room. Before she closed the door he caught a glimpse of several girls whom he did not quite recognize swimming in the soft seductive light, two lounging on the rug with cushions under their elbows and one standing against a wall. They wore semitransparent pajamas through which he could see the purple patches on their bosoms. A pajamaed couple were dancing: close, slowly, hardly moving, arms locked, lost in the intimacy afforded by their closed eyelids.

The woman reappeared.

“Ain’t you undressed yet?” handing him a pair of pajamas.

“No’m.”

“Well, git at it or go home. This ain’ no sideshow!”

She entered the kitchen through the door on the right, through which he caught a glimpse of Baby Miller with her arms around a boy whom he did not know. She was kissing him on the lips and rubbing him all over with her hands. Another boy whom he did not know but whom he had seen at school stood near the refrigerator sucking on a cigarette in a strange way. His eyes were glassy like the eyes of the men and women after they used to come out of Miss Sadie’s apartment, and he smiled as though he were dreaming. The kitchen was full of smoke.

A feeling of desire, like nausea, rolled up from the pit of his stomach into his throat. His back pressed against the door he had entered, his hands blindly, instinctively grappled for the knob.

Saturday morning he made his bed quickly in order to hide the stain on the sheet, which was all that was left of the warm ooze into the depths of which he had slipped through what had been left of Friday night into the black room. He cleaned the apartment, polished it, shined his father’s shoes and his own and pressed their trousers, and waited for five o’clock and supper.

“Did you have a good time at the party?” Rutherford asked once they were seated at table.

“Yessir.”

He bit into the juicy hot dog sandwich and licked the mayonnaise from his lips. Viola poured the beer. He drank, freeing the gummy bread that clung to the roof of his mouth, and waited for the evening filled with the smell of popcorn, frying hair, and more beer, and the gossipy voices of Viola and Miss Ada to float into the front room and lull him to sleep.… He turned toward the window and stared at the night light, which grew brighter, though his eyes were closed, and his thoughts wandered through the red corridors of North High, peeping into the forbidden rooms filled with the objects of all his desires. He tugged at the covers and wriggled this way and that to divert the distracting airs that delayed his descent into the deep dark blackness where the song lay, still, waiting for the redeeming light of Sunday morning.

He opened his eyes in time to catch Rutherford’s flickering hand silencing the alarm clock, and he marveled at the familiarity of the scene: his father sitting on the side of the bed, yawning and stretching, young and strong and dependable, like the rhythm that was always beating — so that you don’t even hear it most of the time — a continual sound that had become a part of his own conception of sound, a rhythmic sound that he had heard all his life. Now he saw life as one long day. One morning when Rutherford stopped the alarm clock and dressed and made his breakfast and called out to him to get up, when Viola dashed up and out minutes later, her voice kissing his ears with some word of affection or admonition. One evening around the supper table held together by one stream of conversation in which Rutherford was the Oracle of World Events, speaking of the machinations of men beyond the intimate walls of home, the alley, Tenth Street, the North End, the downtown of the great city, that vast throbbing pain that was the United States of America, over seas and deserts, steppes and fjords, from the summits of great mountains into the valleys of foreign cities and houses of justice — along the frontiers of angry nations feverishly preparing for war!

Boom!

Time reverberated within his consciousness and he tried to measure its length: Five feet two! Fourteen and a half years old. Mom and Dad are twenty-nine. He’s six feet! She’s five feet four, but she breathes the longest, then Dad, then me. He tried to calculate the length of time: Looooooooong division!

“Boy!” cried Viola in her usual startled voice, as though somewhere deep down inside of her body was a bell that rang and shocked her from the world of sleep into the world of eternal morning.

“Boy—”

He looked at his mother with a smile.

“— look what time it is!” she was saying. He noted that her articulation was perfect, and he wondered why people spoke good English at certain times and bad English at other times. Viola sat upright in the bed, her eyes pink, her fine skin veined with wrinkles from the pillow, adjusting the wanton shoulder strap. “You’d better
git
out a here an’ go to Sund’y school!”

There! She’s changed her speech again! He tried to listen to his mother’s and father’s words down through the years to see if it were always so.

“Aw Mom!” he heard himself saying, “that’s kid stuff. Sunday school! It’s enough to have to go to church, but Sunday school isn’t church! Listenin’-g to all that shouting and carrying on!”

“All right, if you don’ go to church, you don’ go to no show! I
mean that!
Now you git-up-and-git-out-a-here!”

He sat among the familiar smells and sounds and colors of St. John’s, listening to the usual offering of the men’s chorus — they sang “Precious Memories”
again
— and the junior and senior choirs. More or less the same general announcements were made, followed by a song to warm up the congregation. Mass psychology! And then the reverend rose, cleaned his eternally dirty glasses with the biggest, whitest handkerchief in the world — beside Louis Armstrong’s! — as he always did, and geared his mind to the exposure of the holocaust of sin that lurked in the hearts of men, in a world that, but for the Grace of Gawd, would be doomed to Eternal Damnation.

He’ll start with the text first and then make his point.

And suddenly the church seemed to expand in all directions. The reverend grew tall, and the sound of his voice echoed throughout the long, sometimes sad, sometimes jubilant, day that was Sunday. But in the undulation of light and shade upon his consciousness a feeling of dread came over Amerigo. Baptized, saved, he sat full-statured amid the righteous, the reverend’s words droned in his ears like the beating wings of an incorrigible fly, agitating his sense of awareness like the drop of sweat that rolled from the ends of his pomaded hair down his neck and moistened his — Rutherford’s — shorts, which tightened around his crotch, enmeshing him in the irksome throes of doubt, as he tried but failed to reconcile the reverend’s words to the disquieting
Boom!
that echoed from overseas and to the hiss and crack of the telephone wires that looped from pole to pole,
inflaming the tip of Rutherford’s cigarette down through the dark part of one long day.