Such Sweet Thunder (45 page)

He squinted at his mother. She ate quietly, thoughtfully.… Painted!… A sudden unconscious curiosity caused him to scoop up a fork full of hash to see if it were real. He smiled with some secret satisfaction — secret even to himself — as the hot lavalike mass slid down his throat. He washed it down with a swig of tea-colored paint wondering if it made the inside of his stomach brown. Suddenly he realized that the sausage-shaped excrement that plumeted into the water in the toilet stool was … brown!… and reveled in the observation that the excrements of dogs and cats and horses were brown, even when they ate yellowan’redan’white … an’ greenan’blue! He sucked the air into his mouth to see if he could taste the blue color! The red of the setting sun, the greenredan’purple of the vegetables in Mrs. Crippa’s garden. He chewed the particolored flowers spangling Viola’s dress!

“What in the
world
are you doin’, boy!” Viola asked.

He tried to taste the orange, sun-hot, brown-edged, ripe-peach color of her voice.

“Boy!” Rutherford shouted.

Gold! he thought, a split instant before he caught his breath and stared wildly at the hairy-faced man who fixed him with an imperative stare. He sank into an obscure cool-blue silence.

“I sure don’ see why you need to go to no movies, no way —” said Viola, “the way you dream all the time!”

Red! The thick color filled his eyes and coursed hotly down his cheeks.

“What’s the matter, baby?” said Viola.

A storm of color flashed through his mind. He began to tremble.

“Maybe he’s sick!” said Rutherford.

The soft fudge-brown pressure of Viola’s palm upon his forehead.

“He ain’ got no fever. How you feel, honey?”

“Yellow and … Nothin’,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Ever see somethin’ like that?” Rutherford asked. “Just
look
at that li’l niggah an’ he breaks out in a flood a tears! Babe, you better let that cat go to the show before he washes us all away an’ I can’t read my paper — an’ I’ll be maaaaad!” He scooted his chair away from the table. “What they showin’, Pres?”

“The Revenge of Zorro!”

“
The Revenge of Zorro!
That cat’s been re-vengin’ for forty years! No kiddin’! Amerigo, I remember that joker when I was just a li’l bitty boy!”

I’m a boy! Blue … blow your …

“That was a good ’un, Vi …” Rutherford was saying. “You must a put your finger in the hash tanight.”

Viola smiled distractedly at Rutherford, and then cast a worried glance at him.

“Maybe you’d better stay home, hon, an’ go to the show tamarra night.”

“Aaaaaaw — Mom!”

“Let him go!” said Rutherford. “It ain’ gonna hurt ’im. Besides,” he said from the middle room, “I don’ wanna git flooded out a my house!”

Next time it’ll be by fire! he thought.

“Got somethin’ to show you niggahs!” said Turner as they headed out Eleventh Street. His eyes twinkled mischievously as he sucked on the matchstick that dangled recklessly from the corner of his mouth.

“What?” asked Willie Joe.

“It ain’ nothin’ for you, little niggah!” said Turner. “You too little!”

“I ain’ too little!” cried Lem.

“Huh! You ain’ nothin’ but six years old!” said Tommy to his little brother.

“Aaaaah’m eight! Eight!” said Toodle-lum.

“I’m the oldest!” said Tommy.

“Me an’ you an’ Carl!” said Turner. “The rest a them niggahs’s too little. To go where
I’m
talkin’ ’bout you got to run fast — make a quick gitaway!”

“Me, too, me, too,” said Toodle-lum.

“Aw, niggah, you can’t run!” William declared.

“
I’m
the fastest!” said Amerigo.

“Think we oughtta let that li’l niggah come, man?” said Turner to Tommy.

“Where?” asked Willie Joe.

“I’m comin’, too,”
cried William. “You ain’ gonna leave
me
behind! I’ll tell
Tom!
”

His eyes filled with tears and the corners of his mouth turned down just as they reached the corner of Eleventh and Forest Avenue. They waited for the light to change, and then they headed toward Tracy. Just as they neared the corner Turner whispered something in Tommy’s ear, which they giggled at secretly.

“I’m gonna
tell!
” William screamed. “You just wait an’
see
if I don’!” Tears washed down his face, which contorted into a mass of reddish brown clay while a stream of blue-green-grayish snot oozed from his left nostril and blunt sucked peppermint-white teeth protruded from tomato-red gums framed by fleshy lips the color of wet inner tubes.

“I’m gonna tell — you just wait an’ see if I don’!” he was saying, while the others grinned at him. Willie Joe walked nearest.

W-H-A-P! William slapped him upside the head.

“Don’t you laugh at
me, niggah!
”

“WAAAAAAAAH!” screamed Willie Joe, his fudge-brown face breaking up into a mass of bulldog wrinkles, his eyes glistening wet starlike through squinting eyelids.

“Heh heh heh!” Turner laughed.

“You hit ’im agin an’ I’ll beat
your
head!” said Tommy. “I don’ care if you
are
my brother! Pickin’ on that little boy!”

“He ain’ got no business
meddlin’
then! An’ if
you
go somewhere,
I’m goin’, too
— or else
I’m gonna tell Tom!
”

Meanwhile Amerigo searched the four corners of the converging streets for the bank, mentally reviewing the way they had come.

“Aw, it ain’ no bank around here!” he said skeptically, looking ahead eastward.

Tommy and Turner laughed. Willie Joe wiped the tears from his eyes, while the two older boys gazed at the two-story apartment building on the northeast corner of the street opposite them: a dirty, dark, wine-red building. Three smooth stone steps led to a little porch that gave onto the entrance. Through the thick glass door he could see the inner hall and two of the three apartment doors. Discovering no signs of life he inspected the neighboring house, a one-story unpainted frame house where Negroes lived, with a little grassy yard swelling up in a soft mound that gave onto the porch on which there was a swing. It was empty, and the rusty-black door behind the rusty screen was shut.

After that came a weedy lot that swept up toward Tenth Street. He took it in with a glance — and then the boulevard.

Prettier than the boulevard at the top of the alley, he thought, but the boulevard at the top of the alley is bigger!

The after-supper traffic was heavy. Cars sped both north and south along the double lanes surrounding the bush-lined park, which extended from the great Admiral Boulevard down to Twelfth Street, where it was interrupted by the Twelfth Street car tracks, and continued on out south, as far as he could remember.

They ran through the park, playing cowboy and Indian, lingering here and there in order to steal a glance at the scantily dressed sleepers who lay huddled near the bushes in order to escape the summer heat, in groups, in pairs, or alone; on blankets or newspapers; surrounded by the random conversation, sighs, and giggles that burst intermittently through the din of traffic.

Now they stood upon the great stone porch and looked down at the dazzling light that flitted noisily up and down Twelfth Street, swirving dizzily around the North End of the park opposite the porch. The porch had ornaments with geometric patterns of blooming flowers in a gaudy assortment of reds and whites, fragile yellows and blues, soft velvety purples and burnished browns.

Meanwhile the obsolete cannons in the park pointed their muzzles dangerously to the north. Volleys of flickering light exploded against the resisting darkness above and between the buildings and ricocheted against apartment windows and bombarded the proud stone porch itself.

Amerigo squinted his eyes, and the whirling globules of light from the street below swelled like raindrops on his eyelids. They dropped into the troubled darkness of the front room. The green light changed to red, and the tip of Rutherford’s cigarette pulsed in angry worried flashes that converted his face into a mask silhouetted against the middle room window full of stars:

“Boy?” said Viola’s voice:

“Boy? Boy? Boy?”

From every direction it came, converging upon his consciousness until he dissolved into the luminous exploding sound issuing from the still cannon.

“Boy?”

He stretched himself out to his full length and strained his ears and eyes in order to feel the unknown reaches beyond the luminous tenor of his mother’s voice. He breathed in the hot smells of the summer night: sweat, dust, fried fish, chicken, barbecue, beer, gin, and whiskey exuded from cafés, bars, and restaurants and from the pores of the motley crowd of black, brown, and beige people who milled up and down the street adorned in the colors of flowers, of birds, of winter snows. Talking, laughing, singing — crying sunlight! — uttering crystal and rainbow, sea-blue and Christmas candy, bile-green and consciencelessyellow, to the insistent beat of myriad feet and clapping hands.

He looked at the blazing marquee of the theater. A streetcar clanged down the street behind him, just as the strong seductive smell of popcorn filled his nostrils and his feet sank deep into the soft rug after he had pushed his money through the bottom — rectangular — hole of the glass cage where the pretty red-lipped woman sat, hair glistening with snow until shortly after the station when she disappeared into the darkness saturated with the articulate smells of starch, sweat, peppermint candy, Murray’s hair pomade, freshly pressed trousers, talcum powder, chewing gum, shoe polish, and the exploding apparition of big red and black numbers flashing upon the Silver Screen.

BOOM!

“The comedy!” cried Turner. “Men, we’re just in time!”

“Hot dog!” Amerigo cried, tearing the flap off his popcorn and stuffing his mouth full of the hot salty crisp butter-greasy starlike flakes.

“Gimme some,” said a wet soggy little voice just beside him.

Black-and-white figures on the silver screen, reflecting on the foreheads, cheeks, chins, pupils of attentive eyes, and gold and silver crowns of bared teeth.

An African scene: bushes and grass and trees and vines.

An angry lion appeared.

“Gimme some.”

He looked into the starry eyes of Willie Joe and thought: This has happened before. His breath quickened to a sudden excitement that was so intense he had to divert his eyes to the screen.

Negroes in the bushes. Bones in their hair. Rings in their noses. Big white thick lips. Enormous white eyes. Enormous teeth: grinning grinning grinning grinning grinning grinningrinninginninginningin …

Drums beating:
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

“Gimme some …”

He stuffed another handful into his mouth.

“Look! The lion’s comin’! The lion’s comin’!” cried Toodle-lum with great excitement.

“We know it, man!” said Turner.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Negroes in hair-raised white-frightened flight. White soles of big black flat feet flapping in the breeze.

An Englishman appears carrying a long rifle and wearing a monocle, helmet, and khaki pants, then shoots the lion in the behind. The lion gets angry:

“Grrrrrrrr!”

“Aw-aw!” Amerigo cries.

All the fright-white Negroes run into a grass hut.

The lion chases the Englishman, who runs after the Negroes, who tremble behind the door of the hut. The hut trembles.

The Englishman knocks on hut door:
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

The lion is getting closer.

“Aye say, eold man, ah you theah?” The Englishman inquires of the trembling Negroes in the hut, while the lion comes closer and closer until he is eating-close:

“GRRRRRRRRRR!”

He pounces upon the Englishman, pushes him through the door of the hut behind which the trembling Negroes cower. Now that the angry lion is in the hut, they are running and running — all of them — until they get smaller and smaller, the lion, too: smaller and smaller and smaller until they all disappear.

“Gimme some …”

Laughter in animate crystal flashes. Silhouetted heads bobble to and fro, from side to side, until a torch-bearing woman appears upon the
screen with an American flag draped around her body real pretty-like. Like a statue at the art gallery! The interior of the great building fills his mind so completely that he forgets to spell out the big white letters that you can’t rub off with your fingers that flash across the screen. The music swells around the pop and crack of a long black whip and Zorro, dressed in black with a mask, on a big white horse like Buck Jones’s horse, Silver, rears up on his hind legs and leaps over a deep crevasse between two mountains and dashes toward the burning farmhouse where the pretty girl and her crippled old father are holding off an attack of rustlers aided by a horde of renegade Indians with a
Boom! Boom! Boom!
of rifle fire amid the swish and crack of gutting flames excited by the pounding of horse’s hooves and arrow-hiss, blood-gush, bone-crush, knife plunge and tomahawk-thud!

And now the flaming wall is falling upon the pretty girl and her crippled old father. But fear not: Zorro, the Avenger —

“Aw-aw now!” cried William.

— is on the way!

“Will he arrive at the ill-fated scene in time to save Will Slokum and his pretty daughter, Mary, from the devouring flames?” cried a booming voice: “Chapter Four will reveal the exciting destiny of the friends of — ZORRO — THE AVENGER!”

“Hot dog!” Amerigo cried.

“I’m comin’!” said Carl.

“Me, too!” said William.

“Gimme some.”

“Ain’ no more, man!” he said irritably, thrusting the nearly empty box at Willie Joe as they filed out of the movie. They passed through the lobby ringed with bright light that for a moment hurt his eyes and obscured the edges of the shapes of things and people. After that his mind was overwhelmed by the strange clarity of the scene, the sounds and smells that mingled with the remembered image of Zorro dashing to the rescue of Will Slokum and his pretty daughter, Mary, cringing beneath the falling flaming wall.