Somewhat relieved of his anxiety by the things he could only partially see, but which he knew were there, even though the light was out, he got out of bed, pulled on his pants, and tiptoed through the middle room where his mother and father lay sleeping in the big bed that occupied more than half the space. Viola lay on her side on the edge of the bed facing the window; Rutherford lay on his side facing the interior of the room. He paused for a moment in the little space between the bed and the vanity dresser. Its drawers were filled with cosmetics and miscellaneous odds and ends, and in the bottom drawer on the right-hand side beneath Rutherford’s underwear and socks and handkerchiefs was a little twenty-two-caliber revolver like the one that killed Uncle Ruben. The top of the dresser was crowded with an assortment of perfume bottles of various shapes, sizes, and colors, with and without sprayers, with tassels and tops of silver and brass and stems of crystal.
He glanced at the mirror that composed the upper half of the dresser, extending from its top to a distance the height of a short man’s head. He saw Viola seated upon the low wicker stool in front of the mirror (matching the wicker-bottomed rocking chair in the corner opposite the dresser, between which was a narrow closet crammed mostly with her clothes) surrounded by comb and brush and a large hand mirror, patiently performing the miracle that never failed to dazzle the eyes of father and son.
What with the large four-poster bed and the vanity dresser there was hardly enough room for the chest of drawers, squeezed into the corner between the bed and the wall. It was filled with slips and panties (snuggies), purses, ribbons, scraps and cuttings of dress patterns, and knitted caps and belts and bunches of artificial flowers — paper violets, roses, and cherry blossoms Viola had made. And on the floor protruding from under the edge of the chest of drawers was a line of shoes, Rutherford’s, Viola’s, and his.
The ashtray on the end table was filled with cold dirty-gray ashes strewn with crumpled cigarette butts with black grotesquely splayed ends. Meanwhile a beautiful Indian maiden smiled sweetly upon the scene from the calendar on the wall above the table. Her black hair was decorated with beads, her long graceful legs supported a proud straight body that stood under the sweeping boughs of a willow tree beside a birch-bark canoe that nosed a quiet little cove nibbled into the shore by the smooth waters of a blue-green lake, which in turn sprawled out over the numbered days of September written in large Gothic letters.
A shiver ran up his spine when he looked at Jesus sitting at the Last Supper table in the picture that hung over his parents’ heads. He cast a knowing glance at his companions, as if to say:
Who among you here in God’s house — today! — ain’ got some secret locked up in his heart!
He fled to the kitchen, a moderately sized room with a linoleum floor with a flowered pattern of various shades of apple-green, and a breakfast set with apple-green flowers that Viola had painted. And a gas range. A R-O-P-E-R — Roper! Rope, dope, swope, park.
He opened the screen door and stepped out onto the back porch. The sky was brighter and the air was cool, sweet, and fresh with the scent of wet grass. He looked down into the backyard. Wild grass, weeds, the tall stalky sunflowers in the lot behind the empty house next door, and the vegetables in Mrs. Crippa’s garden glistened with dew. The squarish concrete yard between his house and Mrs. Crippa’s house opposite was wet in the cracks, as though it might have been rained on during the night. No flies buzzed around the big trash box standing with its back against the wooden fence on the south side of the yard jammed against the upper half of the outer wall of the narrow shed on the porch below.
He studied his yard with a curious fascination and with a vague feeling of dread. The yard itself formed a little plateau that began on the second-floor level of the back of the house, which was built into the hill that swelled up from the alley. A wooden staircase led up from the ground floor — necessarily a dark damp musty place because the sheer dirt wall that supported the yard afforded neither sunlight nor fresh air — up through the porch below and from there up to the third floor where he now stood.
There was a drain as round and as deep as the half of a scooped-out watermelon in the middle of the narrow concrete shelf below where the neighbors poured dirty dishwater and water from the big tin tubs they took baths in every Saturday night. The cloudy stream souring in the crevice leading to the drain was as yet unvisited by flies, nor did they swarm merrily around the garbage can where the smell of rotting food rose with the sun.
Now the sky was fragrant with the smell of blue air washed with dew; of growing vegetables, the pungent scent of two tall elm trees over three stories high in Mr. Fox’s and Miss Ada’s backyard; of white and red wine, which rose from huge vats in Mr. Crippa’s cellar; and of corn whiskey from the still below.
He looked through the shoot into the alley. It was still asleep except for the crickets chirping in the grass and the incessant twittering of the sparrows. One suddenly swooped down upon the banister near his hand and then darted through one of the paneless windows of the empty house.
A robin stepped from behind a sunflower stalk with a worm in its beak — and took his breath away!
“I hope it never changes!” he murmured with a rush of deep emotion.
He sat down opposite the kitchen door on an orange crate and tried to cope with the fragments of his dream, which now rushed helter-skelter through his mind. He closed his eyes and shut out the stars, and fell down, and was afraid, and ran and ran in order to escape the hand that was trying to break his neck. And then he awoke. He opened his eyes. Objects in the increasingly bright morning light came more sharply into focus and he heaved a sigh of relief for having escaped the fatal hand.
But then he remembered the sound of bedsprings, his father tossing in his bed, waiting for his mother to come home. Then suddenly the flash of the match and the tip of the cigarette glowing in the darkness, and his father’s masklike face silhouetted against the sky full of stars.
“Up long, son?” said a voice.
He looked through the kitchen screen at the shadowy apparition of his father looking down upon him as though he were reading his thoughts:
“Up long, son?”
“No, sir,” his eyes vacantly staring at the worn boards of the porch floor.
Rutherford turned into the kitchen and Amerigo watched him brush his teeth and wash his face in the sink and throw the dirty water into the toilet, next to the door, that they shared with the neighbors. Then he went into the front part of the house.
Minutes later Rutherford reappeared in the kitchen dressed, with the Times rolled and bent like a boomerang. He unbent the paper, unrolled and glanced at it with a heavy sigh, laying the paper on the table while he began to prepare his breakfast.
Amerigo thought: Black coffee two cups, two strips of bacon, two pieces of toast — with plum preserves!
He read the paper as he ate. And when he had finished eating he fixed his lunch … beans left over from supper.… He poured them into a little grayish white enamel bucket that he would warm at twelve on the little gas stove in the basement at the hotel where he had worked ever since the child was born … hoppin’ bells!
Amerigo watched him put on his cap and his suede jacket. Mom bought him these for Christmas.…
“So long,” said Rutherford, “an’ don’ forget to stay in the yard an’
play.”
“Yessir.”
Rutherford disappeared into the interior of the house. He waited until he had heard the click of the Yale lock on the front door and then he ran through the house and down onto the front porch. He sat on the top step and watched his father walk up the alley with long rhythmic strides, falling back on his slender legs as he climbed the hill.
That’s my father! he thought aloud, looking around for someone to tell, but as there was no one, he watched the tall young man fade out of sight in silence.
No sooner than he had turned into the great Admiral Boulevard than an old Model T Ford came zooming down the alle
y, its radiator boiling like a train. Bra Mo coming from the icehouse! The truck was loaded with frosty cakes of ice covered with gunnysacks and a big tarpaulin to keep the ice from melting. Brother Moore put on the brakes and climbed down from the driver’s seat and went around to the back of the truck and pulled the chain through the tailgate with a loud rattle, causing the gate to bang against the truck’s iron bed. Then he started removing the sacks and the tarpaulin from the ice.
He slipped down from the porch and ran up the hill to Brother Moore’s truck to watch.
“Mawnin’, ’Mer’go!” looking down at his bare feet. “Boy! Yo’ momma’s gonna kill you, traipsin’ through this alley wid no shoes on!”
“Yessir,” smiling broadly because Brother Moore smiled broadly, his small black face breaking up into an expression of tenderness.
“Mawnin’ folks!” He heard his friendly voice drifting down through his memory from a year’s distance. Brother Moore had just moved into the alley, into the house next to the empty house where Aunt Nancy and Erwin, her feebleminded nephew, lived.
“Mawnin’ folks! Me an’ ma wife jus’ moved up from Nawth Car’lina. Durham. Gonna settle down up heah. Ice an’ coal an’ kin’lin’ wood. Sho would like to serve you folks!”
He suddenly burst into a smile, for now he saw Mrs. Derby’s image. She and her husband lived on the second floor, north. A short, strongly built black woman with kinky hair and a pleasant, pockmarked face. Her left eye was blue and her right was brown and her husband was a hunter like an Indian, quiet. Mrs. Derby talked all the time, and dipped snuff! You could see it bulging under her tongue under her bottom lip. Ugh! Whenever she wanted ice she used to come out onto the porch and yell: “Bra Mo! Aw, Bra Mo!” and all the kids and grown-ups would laugh. It wasn’t until he joined St. John’s that the child found out that Bra Mo was a diminutive of Brother Moore!
Now Brother Moore grabbed the tongs from his shoulder and clawed one of the cakes on the end and pulled it away from the others with practiced ease. He slid it onto his shoulder and shifted his weight until the balance was right and carried it down to the far end of the basement to the icebox and eased it off his shoulder.
“Whew!” turning to the child who had followed him, “I sho’ hope you don’ nevah hafta work like this!” He returned to the truck and brought in another cake, and another, and soon the truck was half empty.
Meanwhile the sun was advancing rapidly down the alley. It sprawled lazily upon the rooftops. Soon now the raw freshness of the morning would have to give way to the hot sultry air of the summer’s day.
“Betta run ’long, son, yo’ momma’s gonna be worried when she wake up an’ you ain’ theah.”
“Yessir. S’long, Bra Mo.”
“S’long, ’Mer’go!”
He ran swiftly back to the porch. He tiptoed halfway up the hall stairs and listened to see if his mother was awake. Satisfied that she was still asleep, he quietly descended the stairs again and feasted his eyes on his alley, knowing that the alarm clock would ring any minute now and she would wake up — she always slept until the last minute — and spring suddenly out of bed and descend upon him like a fresh sparkling little whirlwind! She would whir down the alley — run! — all the way to the laundry more than eight blocks away and arrive just before the whistle blew. Then she would begin her long hard day on the mangle in the steamy basement of Jefferson’s laundry until twelve o’clock when the whistle blew. And then she would run the eight blocks home in her white apron with a white hand towel wrapped around her neck to keep the sweat from irritating the rash that came because of the intense heat. Just to fix his lunch, and eat with him, with a smile on her face and her mouth set for a laugh! When she laughed her eyes and her pearly teeth would sparkle, and he would forgive her for making him suffer the humiliation of not being able to protect her when his father shouted at her and swore because she came home late. He understood a little why Rutherford might not go away, as he always feared he might, if not today then tomorrow, because Viola flowed like a bright stream of light through their lives, like the sun advancing down the alley.
He thought of noon already. How long it would be until then! Until then he would have to be alone in the backyard.
“But she ain’ woke yet!” he declared happily, deciding that he would remain on the porch as long as possible. The blue sky was now streaked with blazoning rays of golden light. Almost like it was evening. Only now the blue was harder, pregnant with a light composed of many bright hues. It feels funny, he thought, whirling within the dizzying swirl of brightness.
Magically the subtle shades of blue lifted like veils, revealing a world washed in clean morning air, transforming the dirty-gray earthen colors of the worm-eaten porches that leaned against, clung to, the dull redbrick facades of the houses. Taut green blades of grass pushed up between the cobblestones and rusty cans and piles of ashes and clinkers in the foundation of the empty house. Strong rays of yellow light converted little knots of trees into church windows and made the cobblestones look orange.
They’d never been as red as that! Except, perhaps, at sunset. In late September, or October when the moon rose early. As red as a pomegranate!
The lights within the houses had long since flickered on here and there and had already begun to grow pale in the face of the advancing sun. Smoke from chimneys spiraled into the sky. Doors opened and raw-eyed men and women left their houses and headed up and down the alley for work. Suddenly the alley was caught in the crossfire of traffic from the boulevard and the avenue. The alarm clock rang upstairs.
He crept quietly up the steps and stole into his mother’s bed and snuggled in her arms and pressed his face against her breast and squeezed her tight.
“Be still, Amerigo,” she whined sleepily.
He struggled to keep still but his heart pounded with love, and his thoughts flitted around the speculation as to what would happen to him if his father didn’t come back. He kicked at the covers.
“If you don’ keep still!” said Viola.
A ray of sunlight crept in the window. Suddenly feeling the full intensity of his heat upon her face, Viola leaped out of the bed with a shriek and ran into the kitchen. The splash of cold water, the sound of teeth being brushed. Seconds later she shot into the middle room, dressed, and dashed clackedy-clack down the front steps, the child at her heels, and down the alley.
“Jus’ like a fiah enjine! God damned!” shouted Mr. Daniels, a tall thin yellow man with a long nose. He smiled, baring tobacco-stained teeth, swinging his pegleg in one direction and his crutch in the other, mimicking her as she yelled back over her shoulder:
“You be good, an’ don’t you set a foot out a that yard! ’Cause if you do, I’ll know it, an’ your daddy’ll know it, too! An’ you know what that means!”
“Yes’m!”
“Yo’ maw’s tellin’ you right, ’Mer’go!” cried Mr. Daniels. “A-l-l-ways do what your maw says. If I’d a done what my maw said I’d be walkin’ on two legs taday ’stead a three! Ah-ha! ha!”
“Told me you had four legs last night, you old devil!” declared a woman’s voice from the screened interior of the house next door.
Miss Maggie.
“Hush yo’ filthy mouth, hussy!” cried Mr. Daniels.
“Sixty-six, eighty-nine, an’ twenty-four on the big book,” said Miss Maggie, “an’ seven, six, nine on the little ’un. I had a dream. An’ if you bring me some money, you kin show me all the legs you got!”
Mr. Daniels plucked a long yellow pencil from behind his right ear and whipped out a thin narrow book from his vest pocket and quickly wrote the numbers down. Then he detached the carbon copy and stuck it under the screen.
“Lord knows I could use a little luck!” said Miss Maggie as her sickly yellow hand took the proffered ticket. Mr. Daniels nodded, and hobbled up the alley, his shoulders appearing grotesquely powerful under the crescent-shaped shoulder rest of his long yellow crutch.
A man ran heavily up the steps a
nd almost knocked him down in his hurry to enter the opposite apartment. He wore a white sweat-stained cap, a pair of smudgy gray trousers, and rusty black run-over shoes that showed his naked grimy heels. His unshaven face was dirty and there was sleep in his eyes. His cheeks were drawn; large beads of sweat rolled down his face. His teeth chattered as he continued to beat on the door as if to break it down. During the anxious little pauses in which he listened for signs of life within the apartment, he continually rubbed his arms.
Boom! Boom! Boom! He banged again, and finally the door opened. The man mumbled something through the crack that he couldn’t quite hear. Then the door opened wider and he rushed in, knocking over a chair as he did so. The door banged, but it didn’t shut because it had been banged too hard. Miss Sadie was standing by the little table next to the bed where Mr. Nickles lay sleeping on his side, with his back to them. Miss Sadie, a medium-sized yellow woman with sleepy eyes and a pockmarked but not unattractive face, stood as though she were in a daze, her silk negligee falling apart, revealing her naked body. He started at the patch of reddish brown hair between her legs, until his attention was distracted by the sudden violent movement of the trembling man who had grabbed her by the shoulders and was shaking her roughly. Mr. Nickles, without turning over, ran his hand under the pillow and withdraw a big blue gun and said: “Make the niggah show his money!”
The man fumbled nervously in his pockets and withdrew some dirty crumpled bills and threw them on the bed. Mr. Nickles turned over and counted it. “All right,” he said, and turned back over and went to sleep.
Such Sweet Thunder Page 2