Such Sweet Thunder (57 page)

“Maybe we could talk to ’er,” Rutherford said.

“I done
tried
that! She come givin’ me that old who-struck-John about prices goin’ up an’ all that jive —
you
know how she is. An’-an’ I said in that case, we’d have to
move
.”

“You done told ’
er?
”

“Yeah! Wasn’ nothin’ else to
do!
”

“Unh!” He rolled up his sleeves and started washing his hands and face while she sliced the potatoes for the hash. “What did she say?”

“She sure made me hot! Come laughin’ an’ said, ‘Oh you won’ move, Viola, you been here too long,’ throwin’ up ’er hands ever’ whichaway — you know how she talks.”

“Yeah. An’ what did
you
say?”

“I said we done already found a place — an’ … that we’ll be movin’ next month!”

“Ain’ that
somethin’!
Boy, your momma done gone an’ talked us out a house an’ home! Hot damn! Here it is — almost winter! — an’ we
gotta move — an’ ain’ got no house! Now you kin see what I had to put up with all these years!”

“Yeah, I told ’er —” said Viola.

“Well — if you told ’er, I guess that’s
that
. Now lay that hash on me, all this talkin’ about movin’ done gone an’ made me hungry!”

“Won’
she
be surprised!” said Viola with a triumphant grin. “She don’ really think we’ll do it,
yet
— we been takin’ all that jive for so long. An’ just think, it’ll be close to the car line an’ we’ll have a bathroom! Won’ have to be ashamed to tell people where we live. Livin’ on a
street
for a change an’ not in no alley!”

“Hey! hey!” Rutherford exclaimed.

Evening settled down around the kitchen. A strange blue-black light filtered through the curtained windows and mingled with the yellow electric light, giving off a cold color that made the kitchen feel uncomfortable. The new cheap wallpaper spangled with strawberries was beginning to sweat. The smell of the paste that the paper hanger had used to stick it on was still in the air. It made the hash taste funny. He tried to peer beneath the paper and see the faded purple flowers on the old yellow paper, but remembered with a pang of regret that it had been scraped away, that he had helped to scrape it away. He looked about him. The table, the cupboard, the chairs, the plates, even the gas stove, appeared strange, temporary, in the sweating brightness of the room.

“Looks like it’s gonna be all right,” said Viola to Rutherford the following evening. “Mister Williams talked to ’um an’ told ’um that we was decent folks an’ that Amerigo wasn’ no baby — that he’s in junior high school an’ goes to church an’ has good manners an’ all an’ that you an’ me’s workin’ steady. I went an’ met ’im. His name is Mr. Christian. Him-
he
and his wife have been there for twenty years. He looks after the place like nobody’s business! An’ old lady Crippa’s fit to be tied!”

“I bet!” Rutherford replied.

“An’ Amerigo,” said Viola, “I know we don’ have to tell you this, but just the same, we
do
have to be a little careful ’cause they’re so funny about kids. It ain’t you I’m worried about, it’s about a lot a kids runnin’ in an’ out a the house when we ain’ home. An’ you gonna have to stop singin’ so loud an’ trompin’ up an’ down the stairs like a hoss! It won’ hurt you to walk for a change.”

“Yes’m.”

The following evening Rutherford appeared on the back porch with two large suitcases.

Is he goin’ away? he wondered, his thought accompanied by a sudden terrific pounding of the heart.

“Hi, son,” said Rutherford.

“Hi.”

Viola came home soon after with the groceries. She smiled and talked as usual. She cooked a good supper, fried apples and short-cut steaks, which were not disturbed by the telephone ringing. After supper familiar voices came from the radio, provoking laughter and dramatic suspense. These gradually became lost within the procession of songs that issued from Amerigo’s lungs as he washed the dishes. He was in no particular hurry now, because there was no school tomorrow, no fear of the possibility of not being graduated from Garrison School.

Each evening more and more suitcases appeared, and wooden and cardboard boxes and piles of cord string and rope and little cans with nails. Suddenly a bizarre disorder pervaded the rooms. The front room rug lay rolled up in a corner and the windows stood stripped of their curtains. All the perfume bottles on the vanity dresser had disappeared. He wound his way through a labyrinth of jagged piles of kitchen utensils and upset furniture, old bottles, cans, shoes, a host of useless things that frustrated his memory. He noticed that his mother was having the same experience, for now she was saying:

“Unh!
Here’s
that old hat! The first one I ever made. You remember that hat, Rutherford?”

“You got so many hats I can’t keep track,” he replied, trying to place the hat.

“Look at this!” Amerigo exclaimed, holding up a tiny bottle containing a tooth.

“I sure remember
that!
” Rutherford declared, “a perfectly good tooth! G-i-r-l, you oughtta be hoss-whipped!”

Viola grinned, and her gold tooth sparkled in triumph.

“
The Last Supper
by Leonardo da Vinci!” Amerigo proudly exclaimed as Rutherford took the picture down from over the bed and wrapped it carefully in newspaper. Then he took down the calendar with the picture of the Indian maid and rolled it up and put a rubber band around it and stuck it in a corner of one of the packing boxes.

“I don’ see what you takin’ that ol’ out-a-date calendar for,” said Viola.

“Aw, Mom, can’t I have it?” Rutherford looked at Viola in confusion.

Like at the show … he gazed at the two clean spaces on the wall where the picture and the calender had been.

“What?” she asked absentmindedly.

“Nothin’,” he said sadly, as the familiar order of the rooms of 618 Cosy Lane continued to change.

Day after day.

In the red room filled with packing cases he tried to visualize the new house, the new way to school. At times he saw the charred remains of St. John’s, reexperienced subtle feelings of relief and guilt. He tried to measure the distance from the new house to the Municipal Auditorium, to the art gallery, the Fifteenth Street dance hall that was not becoming the new St. John’s, to R. T. Bowles Junior High.

Then one day he watched two big men grab the chest of drawers and carry it down into the alley and put it into the huge moving truck. He took the bird-of-paradise lamp down himself and handed it to the third man who stayed in the truck and told everybody where to put things.

When everything was in the truck the third man swung up the huge tailgate and rattled the chain through the iron rings, and made it fast. It was twilight when the truck moved up the alley.

“Bye, baby!” said Miss Jenny softly.

“Bye.”

“Be good now!”

“Yes’m.”

“I hate to see …”
sang a deep-throated voice from the interior of the Shields’s house. Toodle-lum sat on the porch looking down at him. He waved, almost shyly. Toodle-lum waved back.

“Come on, Amerigo,” Rutherford said, “we’ll walk. It ain’ far.”

… the evenin’ sun go down
.

They walked slowly up the alley through the twilight.

I hate to see …

“So long Mister Jones, Amerigo!” It was Aunt Nancy, just stepping out onto her porch.

“So long Miss Nancy,” Rutherford said, tipping his cap. Amerigo simply smiled.

… the evenin’ sun go down!…

The cobblestones were of a gray-reddish color.

’Cause my baby, she done lef’ this town…
.

They nodded to all the people on all the porches.

If I’m feelin’ to-morrow …

The lights came on just as they reached the top of the alley.

just like I feel today

He turned and looked down the alley lined with porches cut up into faint circles of corrugated light.

just like I feel today …
the man was singing. And a great whirring sound filled his ears. It was like the sound in a seashell.

I’m gonna pack my bags — an’ make my get-a-way!…

“Come on, son,” Rutherford said tenderly. He took his hand and they started across the great Admiral Boulevard.

I don’ live down there no more, he thought.

“If it wasn’t for the powder —” he continued the song to himself, unaware that the voice of the singing man was well out of range.

The new street was paved with bricks, and there was a little yard in front of the new apartment that was crowded with sunflowers that almost reached the second story, their huge heads bowing down toward the wild grass and flowers that grew below. A little walk led to the cement porch of the ground floor. Mr. Christian, the janitor and rent collector, lived on the south side.

“This our mailbox, here,” said Rutherford.

He glanced at the mailbox his father pointed to and read:
RUTHERFORD JONES, VIOLA JONES, AMERIGO JONES
on a little card that fitted into the space just below the top flap with the slit in it where you put the letters in. There were six mailboxes, but before he could read all the names Rutherford was already ascending the stairs. The porch was painted gray, and the apartment on the south side appeared to be empty, but the screen door of the apartment on the north side was open. A stout black woman and a little black girl eight years old with bowlegs and short nappy hair stood looking at them.

“ ’Evenin’,” Rutherford said.

“ ’Evenin’,” said Amerigo.

“ ’Evenin’,” said the woman in a juicy friendly voice, her face and the face of the little girl who looked just like her breaking up into a smile.

They ascended the second flight of stairs.

“Hot dog!” he exclaimed, as he looked out at the great city that sprawled far to the south.

“An’ there’s the ballpark!” said Rutherford, pointing to the southeast.

They took in the view, which was interrupted only by one or two apartment houses to the south and southwest. A private hospital and nurse’s home stood on the corner at Eleventh Street and next to that, north and opposite 1015, a big frame house and a couple of smaller
houses stretched up to Tenth Street where there stood a big empty building with large dirty, plate-glass windows.

The tall buildings of the downtown district towered above the houses opposite his house.

“There’s City Hall!” Amerigo exclaimed. “An’-an’ the Telephone Buildin’ … 
g!
An’- and the Power and Light!” Suddenly he visualized the new way to town.

To the north, across Tenth Street, beyond the vacant lot that filled the corner, stood the ruins of the old St. John’s.

“Come on, son,” said Rutherford, “we better git in here an’ help your momma, ’cause if we don’ she’s gonna be sal-t-a-y!”

They entered the house.

“Hi, you two!” said Viola. “The movers just left. It’s gonna look real nice when we git it all fixed up. Get the floors lacquered an’- and the woodwork washed an’ the windows, an’ the curtains up an’ ever’thin’. That’s what you can do, Amerigo, while your daddy helps me movin’ all these heavy things. I had ’um put the couch over there and the comfortable chair over there, an’ we kin put the gas stove over there in the corner, an’ the mirror goes on the wall, there an’ the bricabrac shelf in that corner, there —”

“Wait-a-minute, woman!” Rutherford exclaimed. “Damn! Let’s git one thing done at a time! Boy, your momma shoulda been a general or somethin’, the way she kin give orders an’ don’ do nothin’ herself!”

“Well,” said Viola, “we’ll see who’s gonna git the most work done. Let’s git at it! We got galores a chores to do before that grub goes on the table!”

All the while Amerigo had been arranging the room in his mind, according to his mother’s description. A smile burst upon his face.

“What you grinnin’ about, you little sharp-mouthed thing!” Viola said.

“It’s gonna be just like it was at home!”

“This is home!” Rutherford declared.

“Aw, yeah.” He grinned self-consciously, comforted by the fact that there was a window in the south wall of the front room and one in the west wall where the door was. The sofa faced the window. When I go to sleep I can look out … He gazed at the south window. The roof of the neighboring house was very close. I could leap it, I bet! He peered very far down into the shoot in order to calculate the risk, and having calculated it, put the thought of jumping onto the neighboring roof out of his mind.

When supper was over they worked far into the night. They spoke very little, each bent seriously upon his task. The “middle” room gradually
began to look familiar: the vanity dresser on the left, the rocking chair in the left corner, the tie rack with the color chart on the wall to the right of the vanity dresser with the straight-backed wicker-bottomed chair. Opposite the dresser stood the bed, and in this wall there was a window. At the foot of the bed was the chest of drawers, underneath which Rutherford’s house shoes had magically appeared. The telephone stood silently upon the end table Amerigo had made in the carpenter’s shop at school, and above the telephone hung the Indian maiden and over the bed the picture of the Last Supper.

He listened unconsciously for the streetcar to rumble up the avenue, but instead it hissed out Tenth Street, a new modern streamlined streetcar with two big pedals, one for the brake and one for the clutch, and a lot of switches and fancy light — and
f-a-s-t!

It stopped at the corner of Tenth and Troost to take on passengers, and then leaped — lunged — down Eleventh Street, and paused resiliently, stayed by the red light and the swift current of whizzing cars and buses that went all the way to Independence. The bell rang, a soft, pleasantly penetrating catlike bell, and it sprang down to Twelfth Street. If he ran through the house to the back porch, he could catch the flicker of its taillight just as it glided past the A&P, like the Silver Streak! Like a whale! Over the bridge and over the bridge and over the sea to France and England!

He entered the new dining room; it had a window facing south. The trunk stood in a corner, and in the middle of the room stood a bright new dining room table. Almost like Miss Fortman’s! Rosewood …