Such Sweet Thunder (69 page)

Rrrrrrrrring!

He took a quick peep into the gym to see if the stand for the orchestra was set up. The janitor hadn’t started yet. On his way to find him he remembered his speech and ducked into the auditorium to have a look at it. As he unfolded the crumpled sheet of paper a feeling of futility came over him. He stared dumbly at the hasty lines scrawled on the paper, and suddenly felt the woman’s gaze upon him while he stood at the foot of the bed, trembling with indignation:

Now?

Rrrrrrring!

He dashed into the choir room filled with
her
.

“It’s our last farewell, dear No — or — th High.…” they sang. The principal’s son had written it. He was lying in a sanatorium, dying of tuberculosis.

Ssssssh!

“and how proud we are to say good-bye. What the future holds, has not yet been told, but you’ve shaped us in a way to make us b-o-l-d! To say we’ll w-i-n … our battles ever, and …”

She’s coming! he thought, feeling the shock anew, as though Mary Ann had just said it.

“W-h-a-t — d-i-d — s-h-e — s-a-y!”

Rrrrrrrring!

Gentle airs wafted through May’s hair and the sun blushed with impotent rage and, though it was only four o’clock, the moon was already making a faint trace in the sky. The Allies were on the offensive as the orchestra tuned up. One could hear the fragments of sound up and down the halls, dashing in and out of empty rooms, as though they were in search of a chord and a sequence and a rhythm that would convert them into a song.

Everybody was there, but he didn’t see
her
at first, though he knew she was there. The fury of the sound screaming in his ears told him that she was there. He raced futilely about, attending to this and that nothing-in-particular. And once, from the corner of his eye, he
saw
her just as plain as day, sitting there with Mary Ann, just like anybody else. But he didn’t know it. Even when the music started. They were playing “Stairway to the Stars.” Ella’s tune, he observed curiously, realizing all the while that he had seen her and didn’t know it.

Now? a voice whispered, cutting the threads of his sensibility like a razor, and suddenly he became conscious of her.… She’s right behind me!… In his confusion he began looking into all the places where she was not — on the ceiling in the sheen of light reflected by the metal rim of the bass drum,
in
the drum, between the skins! The music stopped. He crossed the hall and waited for the music to start. It started. He turned and stared at the musicians. In the Mood, it was “In the Mood” that they were playing. He turned around to stare at the dancers, but saw only
her
face,
her
eyes, not looking at him, but skirting the periphery of his gaze. Another face, dark, wet, sadly smiling, near
her
face. Somebody said something but he didn’t know who it was, there was so much noise. Why are they making so much NOISE!… I … I … can’t
hear!
He stumbled forward for some reason, some utterance had escaped his lips. His arm was sliding lightly around her waist, not too tightly, lest he break her, or get her pretty yellow dress dirty. He thought he held her hand, but it was hard to tell, it was so small, so light, like Aunt Rose’s teacups. I must not touch her! he kept thinking. G-r-a-c-e-f-u-l! Swing into the turn — now! From the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of her face. Her nose was close to his. So
close!
Under the nose the lips. The lips!

Somehow her thin little chest lay close to his, but gently, and the piece was almost over. Will she let me again? He wanted to ask her for the next dance. He cleared his throat in order to ask her for the next dance, and her ear, in anticipation of his utterance, informed her eye, and her nose, which followed suit, touched his!

After that, sometime after that a bell rang, and all that he knew, could remember, was that somewhere in the world, at some time in the world, there had been a dance, and that
she
had come!

“Son?”

He looked up from his speech into Viola’s face. She knows, he thought, and then he dwelt upon the novelty of hearing her call him
son
. She very rarely did that. Rutherford did more often. It was his way of being affectionate, of expressing some difficult side of love that he could express no other way. He always said it at some unexpected time, when he felt he least deserved it, but it never surprised him. It warmed him and made him want to cry. Viola usually accomplished this with a kiss or a bowl of soup. For this reason the word
son
now assumed the gravity of that excess of love and passion reserved only for very serious situations.

“Son?” The word stood suspended, frozen, in the air like a fatal sentence: “Son? Do you know what time it is? It’s almost three o’clock. Even if you do finish that speech by morning, you’ll be too sleepy to say it right, let alone say it by heart.”

He looked at the hysterical scribblings on the page. So banal, so inadequate, not what he wanted at all, not what he really felt. But I’ve got to try! he exclaimed to himself. She’s afraid I’ll mess it up! Resentment against his mother subsumed his feeling of self-pity. She always was afraid! Afraid that if I sang in the amateur contest people would laugh. Afraid that I’d forget the poem in church. Always afraid of what people might say. I don’t care! He bent his eyes upon his speech and gradually became oblivious to her presence; nor had he seen the sandwich and the glass of milk she had placed beside him an hour ago.

The red room echoed with the reverberations of his speech. He tried to catch them with his hands and hold on to them, but they evaded his grasp, they hid in the cool dark channels of his ears and along the banks of the swirling waters of the Western Front of his consciousness:

Amerigo, honey, do you know that you ain’ been born agin? That you still walkin’ in sin?
Sister James asked. And he grew smaller under the glare of the multitude of staring eyes.

As he emerged from the baptismal waters, he beheld the tear-stained face of Miss Southern. A feeling of guilt smote him.

“She’s coming,”
she said sadly.

“W-h-a-t — d-i-d — s-h-e — s-a-a-a-a-a-y?” the sound of his voice swallowed up by the roaring din of fragmentary words.

“Boy!” Rutherford shouted, “if I have to call you agin —”

He stirred sluggishly, feeling cold and old, like after New Year’s when everything has happened. He lumbered heavily to school through the snow-laden streets of May, dreading the fact that he would have to relive it, to say it again, that which had already been said. His head ached. He ached all over, and inside where you couldn’t see it. In his pocket, the speech, like a piece of counterfeit money. Maybe it’s good! he tried to reassure himself. Maybe there won’t be enough time to hear everyone today and I can try tomorrow! His step quickened to this thought, his hopes revived. As his finger touched a sharply folded corner of the speech in his pocket, he experienced a familiar sensation that he tried desperately to remember, but only meaningless fragmentary images came to mind: of the alley in the rain, of Bra Mo sliding a cake of ice onto his shoulder and how it glistened in the sun and dripped like ice dripping from the wires and shades of the lamppost in the spring, he thought of Next Year when … Yeah! —
then
I’d have a
chance!
He hurried now, practically ran, to receive his stay of execution.

Meanwhile three Allied submarines had been blown out of the sea, everybody was talking about a place called Dunkirk, and Mr. Churchill’s voice sounded grave as compared to Mr. Roosevelt’s, which did not, however, stop the bells from ringing.

Stepping into the English class, it occurred to him that it was all the fault of the bells. If they forgot —
once!
— Stopped! Just didn’t ring — all the bells and clocks — in the world —
there would be time!

Rrrrrrring!

Miss Southern, looking like Fate, sat stoically before the class. He sat next to
her
. She was calm, as though
her
place in heaven were assured! Mary Ann sat at her side, resigned, to be sure, but confident. Miss Southern cleared her throat and announced in impeccable English, the kind of English that makes you feel a moron, how the speeches were to be judged. She wished everybody good luck, and then she called on the first candidate:

“Amerigo Jones!”

“Come to Je-sus … Come to Jeeee — sus … Come to Je-sus, just now … just now … just now … just now … just now.”

How long had he been sitting on the steps behind the library, amid the roses smelling all over the place, while the birds crapped on the walk? An ant crawled near his foot and he crushed it with a vengance.

“Well,” he said bitterly as Mary Ann came around and sat down beside him, “don’t tell me! Cosima made it. And you made it. And there’ll be four or five of you who are the other white lights!”

She remained silent.

“Don’t pity me, damnit!” he shouted.

“You made battalion adjutant,” she said in a monotone.

“But I didn’t make major, did I! NO!”

She pretended not to have caught the irony of this remark.

“Has anybody asked you to go to the prom yet?”

She lowered her eyes.

“Why not?” he shouted. “You read your damned speech as good — as well — as
she
did, didn’t you? You play the piano! And
nobody
could
doubt
your virtue! Why not? The sun’s yellow! How-how is it that everything it touches turns black? How’s that? What are you going to
do?
”

“What are
you
going to do?” Mary Ann retorted.

“She said no?”

“
She
didn’t say it, her
father
said it,” said Mary Ann, shrugging her shoulders. “He’s going to take her himself.”

“W-H-A-T? You mean he’s going to humiliate her like that! He’ll be the only father in the whole school! Well, my momma isn’t coming with me. I’m a man!”

“What are you going to do?” she asked again.

Confronted by the all-out boldness of her gaze, he retreated across the choppy canal of a humiliating silence.

“I’ll go with you, if you want me to,” said Mary Ann. Her voice was still, like a depth charge: down … down … down.

Boom!

“Let’s go!” he heard himself saying, in a voice that was younger. The words were enshrouded in an aura of release subsumed by a feeling of dread. The alley flashed through his mind, vaguely, painfully, hot and cold sensations shot through his body. He involuntarily rubbed his knee and wiggled his toe.

“Do you mean it!” Mary Ann was saying.

He looked into her smiling face without really seeing her, his eyes filled with blood, his ears filled with the sound of sirens screaming, the pavement burning under his feet, like the world was on fire, unaware now that they, he and Mary Ann, were racing homeward, hand in hand, as though they were being pursued by some common enemy who could follow them anywhere.

That evening at the table bright with tomato salad and iced tea, Viola, noticing the nervous light in his eyes, asked:

“Who you takin’ to the prom?”

“Mary Ann said she’d go,” he said sullenly.

“Oh! That’s nice!” Viola exclaimed.

“I thought you was takin’ that little Thornton girl!” said Rutherford with a sly grin.

“Aaaaaaw!” he muttered, avoiding his father’s gaze in an effort to conceal his confusion, a mixture of shame and hatred.

“All that callin’ up you been doin’, an’ love-letter writin’. What’s the matter — she turn you down?”

Viola looked into her plate as she spoke:

“Mary Ann’s one a the nicest girls in town — an’ one a the most respected. She’s pretty, too! I’d be
proud
to take her, if I were Amerigo.”

“Who’s takin’
your
gal?” Rutherford asked with a seriousness in his tone that betrayed the smile on his face.

“Her
father!
” he answered contemptuously.

“Her
father!
Ain’ that a killer!”

“She wanted to go! I
asked
her. But her father wouldn’t let her.”

“It must be terrible for her,” said Viola.

“I think I kin git the old man’s car.…” said Rutherford quietly.

“Naw!” said Viola.

“Yeah! He come up to me taday an’ said, Well, Rutherford, I see they gonna take you away from me. Looks like it, I said. He bit down on that stogie an’ then he said, I hear that boy a yours is graduatin’? Yes, sir, I said. An’ then he asked me if he could drive, an’ I said no, an’ then he said, ‘Why don’t you take the limousine an’ drive ’um to the ball?’ An’ I said, that’d be a killer. An’ he’ll need flowers for the young lady, he said, an’ a little change to put in his pocket — an’ then he handed me this twenty-dollar bill!”

“Wasn’ that nice!” Viola said.

They all smiled now, each from within his own private world of remembering, up from the depths of cherished hopes and disappointments and speculations that had stretched out through the days, the years, as the sun rose, and the moons, and the clocks keeping time with the falling snows and with the rains falling.

“I have to start at the defense plant Mond’y,” Rutherford was saying.

He’s too old. Amerigo studied his father’s forehead for traces of his receding hairline, for a gray hair or two, and, finding none, marveled
that he was older just the same. He’s heavier, he thought, remembering the first time he had really noticed it. Then, too, his voice and his movements were more solid now, something in him seemed set, finished, irrevocably fixed.

“You’ll need a new suit!” Viola was saying, in much the same tone as she used to say, “I’ll need a new formal,” caressing the words embodied in the reflection that she had never gone to the circus after Uncle Ruben had died. Still fondling the green velvet suit that Miss Sadie had given him, remembering suddenly that she had not taken him to the circus, either. The star! he exclaimed to himself, as though he were answering a question that he could no longer remember having asked.

As the evening light grew softer the ghostly voices blended into the song that rose from the alley.