Such Sweet Thunder (50 page)

“Sssssheeeed! You make me salty with that same old jive!” Rutherford whispered. “Where in the hell — heck you think we gonna git the money?”

Amerigo stretched himself out in the bed until his legs trembled with the taut strength of the great rebellious slave who snatched the whip from his master’s hand and fled to the northern side of Freedom. He, the great Frederick Douglass incarnate, stood upon the stage of Garrison School and accepted the diploma for graduation with honor, he stood upon the stage of R. T. Bowles Junior High School and received the diploma with honor, and upon the stage of Northern High, and finally he opened the great doors of Harvard and Yale, and strode across the pages of the
Voice
in multicolored splendor!:

Now a great conductor:

Clapclapclapclapclapclapclapclap!

A Preacher!

Clap clap clapclapclap!

A Principal!

Clapclapcl …

A bearded doctor in a black suit!

Clapcapclap
.

A Greek Jockey!

Clapclapclapclapclapclap!

A tap dancer like Uncle Ruben, the Nicholas Brothers, an’ Buck an’ Bubbles an’ Bill Bo-jangles Robinson!

C-a-a-a-a-alapclapclapclapclapclapclapc … l … a … pp …

An actor like Basil Rathbone an’ Ronald Colman an’ George Sanders an’ Laurence Olivier an’ Douglas Fairbanks Junior an’ Senior. “We realleh caunt geo on like …”

Claaaaaaaap-clapclap — Claaaaap-clapclap!

A big-shot lawyer!

An’ now we’ll have a few words from the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Lawyer Jones!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA-Men!

An’ now we’ll have a few words from Undertaker Jones, Chairman of the Finance Committee!

“He’p’im Lawd!”

An Educator!

“Cast down thy bucket where thou art!”

Freedom!

“Not ’cause I wanna — ’cause I have to!”

A barrage of shattering explosions revealed a big white bed. The naked woman smiled up at the trembling white-haired grizzly-bearded man:

Freedom?

He sank into the …

Sssssssh!

The alarm clock went off. Rutherford’s hand flickered out: WHAM! and silenced it. His head fell back upon the pillow for several minutes, and then he sprang up, as if jerked by an invisible hand. Red-eyed, awry-haired, he stretched himself from the side of the bed, the big toes of both feet curving up like thumbs.

Rutherford glanced at him. He turned his back, but nevertheless felt his father’s gaze and heard the jingle of the keys in his hip pocket and the up-swish of his trouser legs and the dull metallic rattle of his belt buckle, followed by the thud of his shoes. They strode sluggishly, resignedly into the kitchen and stopped in front of the sink and waited until the water ceased to flow into the teakettle, and then moved back to the stove, and again to the sink — through the eternal machinations of morning.

“Bye hon,” said Viola softly, as she left for work.

He pretended not to hear.

Alone, he stared through the empty rooms of the apartment. Then suddenly he jerked himself out of bed, as Rutherford had done, and dressed himself.

Now?
whispered the unheard voice.…

He headed southward, up the alley. He cut through the shoot between the second from the last of the little row of buff-colored, one-story stucco houses where Mr. Jason and Mrs. Pritchett lived. A little stiff-legged yellow woman who walked that way because Mr. Jason hit her with a hatchet. Hatchet-leg!

He crossed the boulevard in a hatchet-legged gait, cutting the southwest corner of the park into a triangle, and then took a hatchet-legged hop, skip, and a jump over the asphalt to Charlotte Street past the
house where Howard Robbins lived with his mother, Stella, who had killed her husband.

“Shot ’im four times!” said Rutherford, “an’ got
away
with it!”

“Too bad for the baby, though,” said Viola, “he ain’ no older’n Amerigo. Think a how it must feel, to go through life knowin’ that your momma killed your poppa! An’ then in school an’ all. You know how kids are.”

“Who killed Cock-Robin?”

I did! cried the Sparrow, with my little six-shooter!
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Four times!

Straight out Charlotte Street to Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Streets. Here he halted and looked cautiously toward Locust Street where Rutherford’s hotel was. The coast clear, he sped across Tenth Street and down the hill to Eleventh Street until he came to the grade school where white kids went.

His sense of adventure increased as he grew nearer town.

He regarded City Hall with awe and respect.

So tall — and b-i-g! New and clean — with all those rooms full of desks and pencils and with big thick brown linoleum floors and big warm radiators in the winter and air-conditioning in the summer, and electric fountains that give cold water when you mash down on the clutch!

He frowned with displeasure at the bums carousing on the steps and sleeping on the lawn. Realleh!

Then, as he moved toward the corner, he suddenly thrilled to the memory of March, when the wind swept down this broad street and swirled in eddying currents around the buildings, sucking the hapless pedestrians down into whirlpools of air, causing faces to flush with pink surprise, and tear-blind eyes to blink, and rebellious wisps of hair, furling scarves, ties, and coattails made a hot dash for freedom. Whee! as the ell of an inflated skirt swooped up around a pair of naked thighs! And a bedeviled hat whipped miraculously into the air! Whoop — ee! amid the crowd of outstretched arms and hands grasping futilely at the turbulent emptiness that scattered the contents of parcels hither and thither and sent frisky dogs barking through the streets!

Whoop — ee!

The light changed and he flowed with the crowd across the street and stopped in front of the Telephone Building and looked through the huge windows with letters that you could not rub off even if you could reach them:
B-E-L-L T-E-L-E-P-H-O-N-E C-O-M-P-A-N-Y
! He observed the women who sat at the little barred cages.… Like at the show … 
gazing at the long line of people waiting to pay their bills. At the same time he enjoyed the bizarre reflection of the stream of pretty cars and taxis, of rich-looking white people with expensive dogs and well-dressed children, flowing up and down the street behind him.

Wraaansch!
went the blast of the bronze-brass horns of the big buses, interspersed with hisses:
Pschht!
of their air brakes, as they slowed down in the driveways of the bus depot on the corner and came to a stop. Their big doors swung open; the redcaps rushed up to carry the bags of the passengers who streamed into the station.

He turned down Walnut Street and entered the big drugstore on the corner. Standing before a white-jacketed young man with sandy hair and a bland pimply face he said:

“Do you need somebody to sell watches, razors, an’ soap an’ pencils … or candy?… What you sellin’?”

“No,” said the young man.

He stepped resignedly but undauntedly into the street and made his way up the hill to Main Street. He stuck his head in the door of the luxurious men’s clothing store on the corner, but decided not to apply for work when his intruding head was confronted by the cold stare of a pudgy-faced bald-headed man in an immaculate dark brown single-breasted summer suit and brown-and-white shoes that were new.…

A long black limousine came to a halt in front of the Muehlebach Hotel. A beautiful bouquet of orchids stood in the window of the flower shop, in a crystal vase resting upon a velvet cloth that was artfully draped across an ebony table. A mirror framed in silver hung behind it. “I’ll try there.”

Seconds later he was back on the street.

“Besides, you’d need a decent suit of clothes!” the lady had said not too unkindly, smiling at his shabby corduroy pants, rusty-toed shoes, and torn leather jacket. He caught a glance of himself in the mirror on the way out and was ashamed.

I don’t care, he thought standing before the entrance of the great hotel, trying to decide whether or not to go in.

Freedom!
cried the immutable voice, and in the next instant he was confounded by the triple image of himself reflected in the long glass panes of the swinging doors. He floated, flushing with prickly excitement, into the rich leather-upholstered atmosphere of the lobby, reverberating with subtle sniggers and discreetly amused noises and the distracted glances of eyes resting upon the fine sawtoothed edges of the
Star
. He stood before the registration desk.

The clerk had dark brown hair, brown eyes, a straight nose, and pouting lips. His shirt was very white and his pretty suit had
M-U-E-H-L-E-B-A-C-H
written on it. He was sorting the mail.

Amerigo waited.

The clerk did not look up.

“Eh, ’scuse me.”

The man sorted his mail.

“Eow, aye beg yoahr pahdon, sah!”

The man did not look at him.

“Eh,” he had just begun, when a well-dressed gentleman with a pleasant smile stepped up to the desk.

“Oh! Good morning, sir!” said the clerk, and handed him a letter.

“Thank you,” said the gentleman, and stepped into a nearby elevator.

“Eh.”

The clerk sorted his mail.

He turned and tried to confront the other faces in the lobby.

No one looked at him.

Cast down thy bucket where thou art
.

He stepped, crestfallen, into the street. Fixing his attention upon the tarnished beauty in the antiques shops, he moved down toward the Power & Light Building. Auntish shops! That means old.… I don’t care!

He stood on the corner. He was staring at the tops of an orderly mass of used cars in the lot across the street. Beyond the lot rose a redbrick building upon the wall of which a big picture was painted: black men in white coats, with toothy smiles and gray heads, carrying silver trays laden with beautiful things to eat to elegant smiling white ladies in furs and richly dressed white gentlemen in tuxedos with shiny lapels. Above the picture, painted in big white letters, the sign:

S-O-U-T-H-E-R-N M-A-N-S-I-O-N
.

“Hot ziggedy dog!” he shouted.

He had followed the sunlight into the darkened room. A long silver mirror extended the full length of the upper half of the north wall and reflected the crystalline shimmer of a galaxy of beautiful glasses of all sizes and shapes arranged on glass shelves. As his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, vague details of the room’s interior came into view: the soft red rug upon which he stood, extended beyond the stream of light that threw his shadow into the barely perceptible frame of the rear door. It had no handle and was painted a dull black color, so that except for the thin, intensely black crevice that outlined it, it looked like a part of the wall.

He yawned, a strange and yet familiar heaviness surprising his eyelids. I’ve been here before, he thought, sinking deeper into the rich warm dreamy darkness, which suddenly became alive with shadowy planes of fiery light that illuminated the edges of the tabletops, the backs and edges of seats, legs and rounds of chairs. A pile of neatly folded table linen blazed from a far corner and burned its reflection in the flying wing of a baby grand piano. Subtle shimmerings of light reflected from the surfaces of brass instruments, of a bass fiddle leaning against the wall, of the drums! Throbbing silently under their covers, filling the room with soft pulsing rhythm, while the silver trays, ashtrays, cream pitchers, and salt-and-pepper shakers on a table near the linen table shone like highly polished jewels.

His eyes followed the silver sheen along the edge of a round pillar up to the ceiling where a chandelier, like a great glowing ember, filled the room with sparkling particles of powdered light, like fine snow suspended in a twilight air.

While the music played softly, the hushed whispers of the smiling brightly jeweled porcelain-faced ladies and gentlemen bade the whitecoated, headless, handless, legless waiters with sparkling teeth and eyes to bear the glistening silver trays laden with beautiful things to eat: crystal flasks filled with ruby and emerald liquids, bunches of crystalline grapes, halved lemons the juice of which clung like tears to the rinds. Like at the art gallery, he thought, Flemish!

“What kin I do for you, sonny?” said a voice.

He looked at the chandelier, and then at the burning points of light that gathered upon the surface of a chromium ball of a post three feet high through which a thick red cord looped, separating the tables from the bar. In this burning ball of light — quite suddenly — a pale, round, middle-aged face appeared, surrounded by a tangle of false-looking reddish brown hair, with a long nose and tired sagging purple cheeks that were only prevented from falling upon her several chins by the pursed purple lips of her wide mouth. She stood behind the bar. The cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth supported a thin column of smoke that spiraled up into the great beam of sunlight that flooded through the front door and threw its undulating shadow upon the black back wall.

“What kin I do for you, sonny?” the woman was saying.

“I’m lookin’ for a job.”

“What you wanna do a thing like
that
for?”

“So I kin make some money.”

“Well, what kin you do?”

“I-I kin — can — do
anything
!”

“E-R-N-EEE!” the woman shouted, the tip of her cigarette burning a crimson hole in the foggy sunlight while the timbre of her voice jarred loose a spark of fire that shot into the profusion of smoke that streamed from her nostrils and obscured her face like a tangled curtain of wrinkled gauze.

“EEEEEOW!” answered a loud voice from beyond the black wall.

“Back there,” she said.

Boom-Boom!… Boom-Boom … Boom-Boom
. The handleless door swung gently to and fro and finally came to rest within the confines of the thin black rectangular crevice that interrupted the whiteness of the kitchen’s front wall.

“What does the gen’leman want, Mister Hopkins?” said a penetrating bass voice, just as he caught sight of a pair of beautiful black pink-nailed hands extending from the sleeves of a white cook’s jacket that wielded a long French knife with a swift casual precision. The movement produced a pleasant sharp-gray swishing sound pregnant with the light reflected by the whitewashed walls and the bright array of aluminum pots and pans that hung from racks built onto the back of the long table that hid his face.