Such Sweet Thunder (48 page)

“There was some steps made out a real marble on that side of the room an’ on the other. They went windin’ up an’ around — a little bit like the steps on Twelf’ Street in front a the show.”

“Th!”
said Ardella.

“An’-an’ on the wall that the steps wind up aginst — on that side — was a real big picture. Pur-d-a-y! With a pretty blue sky an’ pretty green trees, an’ under the trees some men was standin’ with long white beards all dressed up in sheets an’ sandals, lookin’ at another man who was talkin’ to ’um. He had his arms all stretched out like he was sayin’ somethin’ important. An’ the wall over the other steps had a blue sky, too, with real tall good-lookin’ men with straight noses an’ big eyes an’ pretty legs — just like a woman! — ridin’ naked on pretty horses, like Indians racin’!”

Cloppidycloppidydoppidydoppidydoppidydoppidydop …

“But we didn’ stop there —”

“Where?” asked Aunt Rose.

“Downstairs in the basement. Only it wasn’ like no basement around here. It was a basement like a front room, only it didn’ have no rug on it an’ stuff like that, with a real shiny floor that you couldn’ see no dirt nowhere. It had a lot of glass closets with a lot a pretty rocks that the Indians usta use for bows an’ arrows an’ hatchets an’ tomahawks for huntin’ an’ a g-r-e-a-t big hat with a lot a feathers for the chief. Pontiac, Jack!”

He stared at the right angle of blazing light that fired a fringe of shiny hair on Aunt Rose’s head.

“You woulda been a wonderful woman, if you hadn’ a …”

“She dyes it.… Ssssssh.”

“An’ dresses an’ a lot a pretty beads an’ bracelets …” his voice was saying.

“Did they let you go through the whole buildin’ by yourself?” asked Aunt Rose.

He gazed into the cool clear skies of her eyes. He watched her tapering brows take flight like a pair of birds in the velvet picture on the front room wall:

“Did they let you go through the whole building by yourself?”

“The gentleman’s dreaming,” said Ardella, “he must be in love!” Her prune-colored lips spread out in a sensuous smile, and her eyes narrowed into slits, so that the whites were barely visible through the feathery sheen of her eyelashes. He shivered, a funny feeling crept between his legs, and he dropped his glance to the polished floor.

“What was she like, son?” Aunt Rose smiled tenderly. Her eyes articulated the assurance that she understood, that she
really
understood, that she
knew
.

“Who?” in a flood of embarrassment.

“The guide,” said Ardella. “You had a guide, didn’t you?”

He looked puzzled.

“The young lady who took you around an’ explained ever’thin’,” said Aunt Rose.

Ardella was still smiling sensuously.

He stood a-tremble before the young lady with the soft red hair and large green eyes spaced far apart. The sun glistened upon her moist red lips, as she signaled for the class to sit down upon the floor in front of the long wooden box with the carved figures. The class obediently crumbled to the floor in a mass of heads, eyes, arms, and legs akimbo, while he remained standing, his foot caught in the shadow of the iron bars of the Spanish window.

She smiled at him and motioned for him to sit down.

He writhed in a fury of embarrassment, but remained standing. Giggles spilled from his classmates’ mouths onto the floor.

This is my Sund’y suit! he thought.

An instant later
her
hand touched his shoulder, like a magic wand. His will flowed out of his body and he sank to the floor.

He studied the movement of her throat as she spoke. It was framed in the blazing white collar of her blouse.

I bet it never gets dirty, he thought.

She unconsciously touched her neck with her fingertip and shifted her attention to the box with the carved figures, explaining that it was used by the rich Spanish noblemen to store their treasures of: … balls an’ grasshoppers, june bugs an’ rubber-guns, Libby labels an’ glass stars in …

And presently the group had sprung to its feet and was moving through a series of beautiful rooms. He walked at her side, sipping the sweet wisdom from her … licked-wineball-colored … lips!

“The young lady who took you around an’ explained ever’thin’,” Aunt Rose was saying.

“An’ there was a —”

“Were!”

“Yeah. A whole lot a pictures, too, with real people in ’um — in every room! — pictures of watermelons an’ or’nges an’ grapes that looked like you could eat ’um off the wall, but they was painted. An’ they was a lot a cows an’ sheep an’ old brown houses in the middle of big yellow fields with men an’ women workin’ in ’um, plowin’ an’ tyin’ up hay into bundles … an’ sittin’ an’ talkin’ an’ laughin’ an’ dancin’ — real funny-like, with they legs all stuck up in the air, all funny-like. But they wasn’ movin’, an’ you couldn’ hear what they was sayin’, but they
was
movin’ — an’-an’ you knowed — knew they was sayin’
somethin’!
Ain’ that funny?”

“What?” asked Aunt Rose.

“That you kin see somethin’ movin’ that ain’ even movin’? An’ that you kin hear somethin’ that you can’t even hear!
You
know what I mean! There was a cat playin’ a violin in one picture, an’ I could hear it just as p-l-a-i-n —”

“You lucky, son,” said Aunt Rose, “there’s a lot a folks can’t even hear it when they hearin’ it!”

“An’ then — in a-nother picture there was a little boy in a blue suit that was
laughin’!
An’ he looked just like it, too! Sort a dancin’-like, but he wasn’ movin’. I looked away an’ then looked back agin — real quick! — an’ he wasn’ gone nowhere, but he was still dancin’ just the same, Jack!

“An’ there was another picture — the prettiest picture in the w-h-o-l-e w-o-r-l-d!”

“What was
that?
” asked Ardella.

“The picture of a man with a iron hat on his head made out a gold. His head was kinda in the shadow-like, so you couldn’ hardly see what he looked like, but you could see ’im just the same. But you could see his hat best. It was gold an’ shiny. A man from olden times. He’s called
The Man with the Golden Helmet
, Jack! — an’ —”

“B-o-y!” cried Aunt Rose, “was there anything you
didn’
see?”

“No’m. An’
listen!
There was a b-i-g b-i-g room — from China!
All the way from China!
With a lot a shiny horses an’ things made out a glass, an’ dishes an’ vases, an’ on a wall — real tall — was a statue of a b-i-g man with pretty ears! The biggest ears in the w-h-o-l-e — w-o-r-l-d! An’ long eyes that looked like he was half asleep. He was sittin’ down with his
legs crossed — Indian-fashion — an’-an’ his hands an’ his fingers looked like a woman’s. But he wasn’ sleepin’. If he was sleepin’ he’d be lyin’ down. He was thinkin’ about somethin’ that he knowed.”

“Knew.”

“Unh-huh. Kinda dreamin’-like.”

“What was he supposed to be?” Mr. Williams asked.

“He was God. Not exactly God ’cause
he
was dead. Like God — only
they
call ’im Booda. Funny name!”

“You must be hungry after —” Aunt Rose began.

“But how kin He be God when GOD’S
GOD?
”

“Ain’ no use in me lyin’,” said Aunt Rose with a sigh, “I really don’ know, but I reckon those people over there that believe in ’im’s gonna git to heaven just as quick as any a the rest of ’um. Your cousin Ardella went to college, ask her.”

“I don’t know, Momma,” said Ardella.

“Come on back in the kitchen,” said Aunt Rose. He followed her into the kitchen. It was smaller than the kitchen of the old red house on the hill. It was on the ground floor and looked out onto a porch walled in with narrow slats running crisscross.

He sat down at the little table in front of the narrow north window that looked onto a neighboring house. While Aunt Rose busied herself about the stove, a brown-and-white collie dog poked its long thin muzzle against the screen and whined in a friendly way.

“Go ’way, Queenie, I done fed you once taday,” said Aunt Rose without looking up from the pot she was stirring.

He observed unconsciously that Aunt Rose’s feet and legs were swollen, that she moved with greater difficulty, a faint groan or grunt accompanying each radical shift of position. And that almost always now her tightened lips betrayed the laughter in her eyes.

She’s getting old. He felt sad, as he ate the chicken she offered him, even though he wasn’t really hungry. But then after a while it made him hungry because it was so good.

“Why’s that?”

“Why’s what?”

“That you kin git hungry even when you ain’ — aren’t?”

“I hope you don’ never have to be hungry when you hungry,” she said, caressing him and pressing a coin in his hand. “Buy yourself somethin’ good for the show.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“What show you goin’ to?”

“The Lincoln an’ the Gem.”

He told her what Viola had told him to tell her, said good-bye to her and to the men sitting around the table. The Victrola was playing again:
I’m a big fat momma — with meat shakin’ on my bones!

“Bye, Ardella.”

Every time it shakes, some skinny woman lose ’er home!

“Bye, baby,” said Ardella in a tone so warm that it made him turn around in the middle of the path, amid the cheering crowd of blooming flowers, and wave with a self-conscious flurry of emotion.

Patterns of noisy light burst from all the rooms and cascaded through the hall beneath the stern glances of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and the father of America. I pledge al-legiance to the flag of the U-nited States of A-mer’ca an’ to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty an’ justice — for all!

“All of me! Why not take all of me?” he sang quietly: “Can’t you see … I’m no good without you.”

“Ssssssh! Ssssssh!” rippled through the wriggling chairs of the auditorium. The new principal, Mr. Powell, rose to his feet and signaled to the student body to be silent.

“We will now sing the Negro National Anthem!”

He looks a little like Dad, he thought, admiring the handsome figure in the white shirt and dark brown suit. A little golden key at the end of a golden chain swung from the third button into his vest pockets like curtain cords. Like the reverend’s. “And he’s got good hair, too! It swept back from his domed forehead … like Aunt Rose’s … like it was made out a stone like at the art gallery. In-
tella-gent!
”

“…  The Negro National Anthem!” he was saying, and there followed a rumble of chairs and the gentle cracking of supple bones stretching the host of bodies into respectful attitudes. The introduction wriggled from Miss Tucker’s, the seventh-grade teacher’s, fingers and excited the air into their lungs where it strained to be released by the downfalling hand of Principal Powell:

“Now!” declared the hand.

“Lift every voice and sing! Till Earth and Hea-ven ring, ring with the har-m-o-ny of li — ber — ty! Let our rejoycing r-i-s-e! High as the listening skies! Let it resound loud as the roooooling sea!”

Heads up, shoulders pushed back, eyes peering into the bright sunny vistas of the rolling sea …

Land!

“Let us march on! till Vic — to — ree — is won!”

“Up from the human wilderness of slavery!” declared Principal Powell, “and into the bright air of freedom, eating of the fruits of knowledge and culture, facing the responsibilities of enlightened citizenship in a better America, in a better world — that is our reason for living!”

… Like Thomas Hayes and Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson and Ira Eldridge — and
me!
— he thought.

“We must learn to read not only with our eyes, but with our minds, with our spirits! We must learn to write not just words, but those deep human feelings — which all men possess — that communicate man’s desire to live in freedom and harmony with himself as well as his fellow man. We must learn how our government is run so that we can vote for our rights, and for
the Right
, even though it be against our personal interest. That is what it means to be an American! The one great duty of life is to serve others, to live for others!

“The time to start is now, the place, right here. It is my desire to see you become organized into classes with each class representing a unit with collective as well as individual voting power. We’re going to establish good government at Garrison School, and we’re not going to put our personal interests above Garrison’s interests. The president, to be chosen from the seventh-grade class, will be responsible to the whole student body and to the faculty for the intelligent, efficient governing of our school. I can think of not greater ambition for a young man or woman than to aspire to this lofty position —”

Hot dog! I’m gonna be the president! — I’m gonna …

“We must learn to govern ourselves so that when we reach the age of citizenship we shall be able to fulfill our roles as citizens of the city and state, of the great nation in which we live. The future belongs to the educated, to the hard and honest worker, to the dreamer with a vision. Let us all strive to be better human beings, to be smarter human beings, to be the makers of our destinies!”

Clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap!

“Let us sing, in closing, ‘My Country ’tis of Thee.’ ”

“My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of li-ber-ty, of thee I sing! — Land where my faaather died!…”

Crispus Attucks, the first man to die for his country … in a boat with
George Washington, the father of the country, crossing the Pa-to-mick … and Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad with John Brown’s body lies buried in the … and President Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, who walked five miles just to give somebody back a nickel that somebody forgot that came into his store because he was a poor man and liked to help poor people, so when the South wanted to keep the Negroes a slave, he said, We’re going to free the slaves because slaves are people just like everybody else and because slavery is bad like it says in the Bible and so he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation that said that there couldn’t be slavery …