Such Sweet Thunder (20 page)

A
race
man!
cried Viola.

A real educator!
said Rutherford.

The image of Miss Chapman surprised him by its sudden appearance. He was bewildered by a kind of magic through which the faces of Viola and Rutherford — who were little kids like him — were fused with the faces of Mr. Bowles and Miss Chapman!

“You’re Amerigo Jones, aren’t you?” the great man was saying.

“Yessir.”

“I believe the bell has rung. That means that you have to go inside with the others.”

He walked dreamily toward the building at the great man’s side.

“When you go home this evening, say hello to your mother and father for me. We’re old friends.”

“Yessir.” He stumbled up the steps, while Mr. Bowles turned and scanned the playground to see if all the children were in.

The bell rang again; for the noon recess. It rang again, and all grew gradually quiet. Again it rang, and and he stood at the front entrance, waiting for Tommy who finally came.

Then the hazardous journey home by a route crowded with fences and alleys strewn with cans and rocks to kick, with hills strewn with wildflowers and thorns and briers and cockleburs and sunflowers with stalks crawling with grasshoppers. A little boy in the kindergarten named Harry Bell got hit in the eye with a rock and two girls in the third grade had a fight over the gym teacher and there was an exchange of rocks between gangs of Italian and Negro children.

“Come on!” Tommy cried suddenly, and he ran with the Negroes.

If you git into trouble
, he heard Rutherford say,
run, but if you can’t run, fight! But fight to win!

“Hurry up!” cried Tommy, ducking to avoid a barrage of gravel, and he had to dispense with his questions as to the reason of his flight in order to keep up. By the time he got home the question had exhausted itself. He came to the gate, paused briefly, absentmindedly, to stare dumbly at the empty house, irritated by his growing awareness of the strong nauseating odor that came from the hole in the foundation.

The sky flushed rose, and then blue, and was shattered into particles of light; the air was pregnant with savory sound and movement that satisfied his stomach, but merely filled his mind with a hungry anticipation of what tomorrow would bring, and tomorrow, until Saturday, and then Sunday.

… Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.… God bless Mom an’ Dad … Dad an’ Mom … an’ Aunt Rose an’ …

Saturday leaped into his mind in a special way:
“We usta go snake huntin’ ever’ Sad’dy on Clairmount Hill an’ in the woods down ’roun’ Cliff Drive an’ down by the railroad tracks.…”

And then Sunday and Sunday school. The church loomed up out of the darkness.

I’ll get a quarter! And suddenly the sound of his mother’s voice made him tingle with excitement.

Yeah — I guess you kin go to the show with Tommy — if it’s all right with your daddy…
.

It’s all right with me, if it’s all right with you
.

Okay by me.

I wish Sunday was tomorrow!

He scanned the sky for a falling star.

“Hi, Vi!” cried Miss Ada the following evening after supper.

“Hi, Sister Bill, I’m ready!” Viola answered with a smile, stepping to the door to meet her. They said good-bye and rushed off to the club meeting in a whirl of powdered, perfumed enthusiasm. And before he could finish his dream of Miss Chapman and Mr. Bowles she was home.

Thursday passed unnoticed.

Friday he learned a song:

Good mornin’ to you, good mornin’ to you, good mornin’, dear teacher, good mornin’ to you!

“That’s fine!” said Viola.

“That boy’s gonna be a Irish tenor — like his uncle Montroe!” Rutherford exclaimed with a mischievous smile.

“Who’s Uncle Montroe?”

“Don’t you remember him? He had the best Irish tenor on the avenue!”

He thought of a blue-eyed man with gray hair in a policeman’s uniform, or a fireman’s.…

“He usta take you ’round with ’im all the time when you wasn’ no more’n two years old!” said Viola.

“Closer to
three!
” Rutherford exclaimed. “That little niggah wasn’ walkin’ till he was almost old as me!”

“Miss Chapman says you ain’ supposed to say
nigger
, ’cause that’s what igner’nt people says,” Amerigo said. Anger and surprise rushed into Rutherford’s face, followed by an expression of profound embarrassment. Viola struggled to suppress a smile and dropped her eyes to the floor.

“Yeah, well — anyway …” Rutherford stammered, “remember, Babe? He was eh, crossin’ crossin’ the boulevard with the pr’fessor here. He wasn’ nothin’ but a baby then, an’ didn’ go ’round teachin’ his father — an’ the traffic was heavy, I mean heavy! You know how it is at five o’clock! An’ that little-eh-
joker
was doin’ the
mess-around!
”

“Ohooo!” Viola yelled, “an’
gruntin’:
unh-unh-unh-unh — messin’ around to beat the band! The cars stopped on the boulevard an’ all the white folks was a-lookin’ and a-laughin’! I just
knew
you was gonna be a dancer like Ruben!”

“He’s gonna be a pr’fessor — or a preacher!” said Rutherford wryly, “tellin’ his
daddy
what to say! But Miss Chapman’s right, Amerigo, we shouldn’ use that word. If anybody calls you that, just ignore ’um. That’s funny, if a white man’d call you that, you’d wanna kill ’im, but we call each other that all the time. I hear the Italians callin’ each other
wop
all the time, but if
you
said it, they’d want to take you for a ride! The Jews do it, too. I guess it ain’ what you say, as much as how you say it — what you
mean
by it. It’s about time for you to hit the hay, ain’ it, Rev?”

“Yessir.”

The birds woke him, as usual.

It’s Sunday, he thought, tingling with a fresh excitement that gripped him immediately. He felt the warm Sunday sun upon his face. Sunday is different.

He looked into the middle room. Viola and Rutherford lay side by side. They slept lightly and peacefully, as though the slightest sound would wake them. Suddenly he heard the clock ticking. It sounded different, too. Nobody paid any attention to it. Viola and Rutherford lay there beside it as though its ticking did not make any difference.

It’s Sunday! he thought.

He lay quietly and tried not to make any noise. It wasn’t time to get up and get ready to go to Sunday school yet. He listened to the birds singing and the clock ticking, noticing that the sky was still too soft, with too much blue in it.

A bell rang from a church tower. The church down below the spaghetti factory. It has a high pointed roof like an ice cream cone. Catholics … where the I-talians go.

As he lay looking out the window he thought about Jesus who was good to little children who did what their mothers and fathers told them in order to send them to heaven. A good place where there is a whole lot a singing like at St. John’s and the streets are made out of gold bricks!

The alley flashed golden before his eyes! Everybody was singing. Some in the windows and some in the streets! The alarm clock rang.

“Unh!” cried Rutherford from the middle room. He looked in and saw his father sitting up in bed with an anxious expression upon his face.

“What’s the matter?” Viola asked sleepily. Rutherford stared at the clock.

“I forgot it was Sund’y! Hey-hey!” he chuckled quietly, lay back down, and turned over on his side.

Once more stillness settled over the middle room.

After a while he stole naked down the steps to the front porch and got the paper. He glanced up and down the alley. It was blue and amber and sort of golden — and quiet, except for the birds. He tiptoed back upstairs and got in bed and neatly separated the funny papers from the rest and gazed at the pictures. He scanned “Popeye” and “Tillie the Toiler” — she was so pretty — and “Tarzan of the Apes.” Tarzan was standing upon the bough of a huge tree with a strong vine in his hand, gazing down upon a lion that was sneaking upon a man in a hard round hat and short pants, with a gun. His eyes raced to the end of the strip, to where Tarzan jumped down on the lion’s back. That was the end. He browsed over “Maggie and Jiggs.” They looked funny, but he did not understand what it was all about because he could not read that much yet. Mickey Mouse is funnier! All you have to do is look at the pictures. He studied “Little Orphan Annie” and “Little Annie Roonie” and “The Two Black Crows” and all the colored pictures on both sides of every page until there were no more, and then he looked at the best ones again.

When he was almost finished Rutherford got up, got dressed in his Sunday clothes, and went to work, and Amerigo slipped into bed beside Viola and snuggled up close to her.

“Now you be still,” she said threateningly. “Taday’s Sund’y an’ I want to git a little rest!”

He lay very still for a minute. Then he tossed and turned and kicked and sighed until she sat up in bed and looked at the clock and said:

“All right, all right! You kin git up. Put the water on an’ call me when it’s hot. An’ put some clothes on! You’ll catch your death a cold, runnin’ through the house like that!”

He slipped happily out of the bed and ran into the kitchen and put the water on. Then he went out onto the back porch. Mrs. Crippa’s light was on. He could see her standing in front of the kitchen table sipping something from a cup — Coffee, I bet — noticing that she was dressed in a long black dress with a shawl over her shoulders. Then the light went out and her kitchen suddenly looked dark and gray inside and he could not see her anymore.

He heard the water boiling in the kitchen. He peeped through the screen and saw that it bubbled out of the spout and from under the lid and onto the blue flames and made them turn yellow. He rushed in and turned off the gas, and then went into the middle room and woke his mother. Her eyes were pink and there were faint welts on the fine dark skin of her face and arms from the wrinkles in the sheet and the pillowcase.

Minutes later he was standing in the No. 3 tub, laughing and giggling, while Viola rubbed him all over with a big washrag. “If you don’t keep still! Fidgetin’ like a jumpin’-Jack!”

“It tickles!”

Then presently Already! it was over, he was dressed in his gray Sunday suit and his black Sunday shoes. She tied a nickel in the corner of a handkerchief and stuffed it into his pocket.

“Do you have to carry that star
every
where?”

“Yes’m.”

“Why don’t you leave that thing here? What you gonna do with a star in church?”

He made a face.

“All right, but at least put it in the other pocket.”

He put it in the other pocket. They went down on to the front porch together. Tommy, William, and Lemuel were coming down the alley.

“He’s ready!” said Viola. “You bring ’im straight home when church’s over!”

“Yes’m,” Tommy said, “I will!”

“You be good, you hear?”

“Yes’m.”

He ran to join the others, strutting a little in his Sunday way, glancing down with satisfaction at his Sunday suit, his greased legs, and his sparkling black shoes.

They made their way up the alley. They passed Aunt Nancy who was standing on her porch all dressed up in her Sunday clothes, too: a long black dress with a white collar. Her hair was done up nice.

She’s on the mother-board, he thought, tipping his cap the way Viola and Rutherford had taught him.

“Well now, ain’ that sweet!” she smiled broadly.

“G’mornin’, Aunt Nancy,” said Tommy.

“G’mornin’,” said William.

“ ’Mornin’,” said Lemuel.

“Bless your little hearts!” said Aunt Nancy, following them with her glance all the way to the top of the alley.

Mr. Whitney was standing in the door of his house, a tall thin honeycolored man with straight silver hair like a white man’s and a white wisp of beard under his chin. He thought of Professor Bowles who looked like a white man, too.

“ ’Mornin’, Mr. Whitney,” he said, and the others joined in. The old man smiled vacantly, dreamily, raising his fine long feeble hand as a greeting.

Earl Lee stood on his porch, next to Mr. Whitney’s. His skin was dark brown, his lips were fleshy, and his face wore a suffering expression, which he now and then converted into a sneer.

“Ain’t you goin’ to Sund’y school?” William asked.

“I don’t have to! That’s for kids!”

“Aw yeah!” Lemuel cried, the smallest and youngest of them all.

“Aw yeah!” Earl Lee retorted, imitating his voice.

“You ain’ no more’n ’leven, niggah!” Turner cried.

“He’s just ignarunt!” said Amerigo.

“Yeah,” said Tommy, looking at him with surprise, adding, “He don’ know better.”

They eyed each other jealously until they were out of sight.

They turned at the boulevard. The traffic lights flickered delicious flavors of green, yellow, and red: all-day suckers. They crossed between “flavors,” hand in hand, south up Campbell Street. At Eighth Street they passed a row of half run-down houses where many children were playing. He tipped his hat to all the women and greeted all the men.

“Now that’s what I call a gen’lmun!” said a big dark lady who was standing on the corner talking to a skinny yellow lady.

“Whose little boy is that?” asked the yellow lady.

“That’s Vi-ols’s boy. They live down in the alley.”

“Look at that sissyfied niggah!” said a boy. Big. He had seen him at school but he did not know his name.

They crossed Eighth Street where Negroes lived on both sides of the street, continued south, and were suddenly in a white neighborhood. Farther up on Campbell Street he caught sight of Aunt Lily’s laundry.

Sunday school was held in a large gray room with narrow floorboards separated by thin black cracks. They made him think of Sister Clara James. He could hear her admonishing him to follow the straight and narrow. His eyes had fallen upon the floor and followed the cracks to the wall, and through the wall, and he had resolved to be better.

He stared at the first of three round stained-glass windows just behind her head, while she officially opened the Sunday school and started to make the general announcements. The light flooding through the opaque window decorated with wine-red flowers with beer-bottle-green leaves obscured her round dedicated face and threw her highcrowned wide-brimmed hat with its long turkey feather into full relief.