He went out on the porch and sat on the top step and peered down into the room from the banister railing. All he could see was a big table filled with whiskey bottles and a cardboard box full of new corks. Some of the bottles had funnels in them. Mr. Shorty and Mr. Pete poured something that looked like water into the bottles. Only the “water” didn’t smell like water. It had a strong, sort of sweet burning smell. He watched them fill the bottles one at a time, and when they were all full they poured some brown stuff in them until the strong water turned brown, and then they pushed the stoppers in.
After that they put the bottles in a big wooden box and nailed a top on it. Then, just as Mr. Shorty lifted the box in order to put it in the corner behind the door, he looked up and saw him watching them. He said something to Mr. Pete and then Mr. Pete said something to Mr. Shorty in funny words that he couldn’t understand but sounded like the funny words that Mr. and Mrs. Crippa sometimes said, and Mr. Shorty had banged the door.
“Amerigo, set up here by me,” Viola was saying. He moved to the top step and sat by his mother. Meanwhile Mr. Pete looked up at Viola and smiled, at which she pulled her dress down over her knees, drew her legs well up under her body, and looked with a stony expression toward the top of the alley.
“Hi, Tony!” said Mr. Pete. He didn’t answer. Viola drew him closer to her. Then the screen door of the upper apartment of the Shieldses’ house opened and banged and Hazel and Margret Shields stepped out onto the porch and sat down.
Mr. Pete and his companion looked up on the porch and grinned. The two young women grinned back. Viola and Rutherford exchanged significant glances with Mrs. Derby and Unc Dewey. No one spoke. The child glanced up and down the alley; it was quiet, too.
The sun had disappeared. There was only a faint rose stain where it had been a few minutes ago. And now he suddenly was aware of a pulsing high-pitched chirping sound that, though familiar to him, he was not aware of having heard ten minutes earlier.
Crickets! He held his breath. The air was full of cricket-sound! Nervously, excitedly, he peered into the darkened windows of the empty house where the wild grasses pushed up through the ground floor and stuck out of the mound of ashes and cans in the cellar. The sound was loudest there. They’re in there! He looked at the sky, he looked at the trees, at the street lamp, and then he looked up toward the top of the alley.
Two figures appeared upon the very dim horizon, a man and a woman. They made their way slowly down the alley. The woman carried a basket on her left arm and linked her right arm in the left arm of the man. Every few yards she would halt and take something from her basket and toss it with a wide sweeping theatrical gesture to the left and to the right, bowing gracefully, touching her lips with the tips of her fingers and blowing kisses to the people on the porches.
Here and there someone sniggered, but not loudly, while most of the people looked on with a sort of respectful awe.
“Look!” he cried, as the woman stopped to greet the Johnsons, the Harrisons, Miss Nettie, Bra Mo, and Aunt Nancy, smiling gently upon the knot of giggling children sitting on the porch.
“Shut up!” cried Tom Johnson.
“We see,” said Viola thoughtfully, in a tone that checked the smile upon his face.
The streetlights came on, cutting globules of light into the cobblestones.
“Aunt Tish and Gloomy Gus!” Rutherford exclaimed.
As his father spoke he noticed that Mr. Pete, who had leaned his chair against the banister at the foot of the front steps, whispered something into his companion’s ear and laughed out loud. His companion did not laugh.
“But that ain’ his real name,” Rutherford was saying. “His real name is — do you remember what Pr’fessor Bowles said it was that time, Babe?”
“Naw, I don’,” said Viola, “Worthington? That ain’ it, but it was somethin’ like that. I think, anyway.”
“They ain’ quite right in the head, Amerigo,” said Rutherford softly. “I been seein’ ’um ever since I kin remember. But they’re nice people, though. They don’ bother nobody unless you bother them. Don’ never fool with that old man! Naw sir!”
Gloomy Gus and Aunt Tish stepped into the lamplight. Just above the lamppost, diffusing a cool aura of perfectly round red, sharply impaled against the intense blue sky, stood the moon.
“An’ he’s always dressed proper, too!” Rutherford continued, “in that old hat, with a coat an’ a tie an’ a vest to boot! You see that coat he’s wearin’?”
The child could see him quite plainly now. He looked at his baggy coat. It seemed to weigh him down.
“That’s his arsenel, Jack! Rocks! Big ’uns, Amerigo! Half bricks! He goes ’round like that to protect hisself. Jokers always jokin’ at ’im an’ pullin’ monkeyshines!”
He was looking at Aunt Tish. How did it feel not to be right in the head? Crazy? Her eyes shone darkly, brilliantly through a black lace veil that fell mysteriously over the wide brim of her tattered old black hat. At the base of the crown a large pale withered rose …
“I seen him throw a rock at a niggah once,” Rutherford continued, “from almost half a block away an’ lay his head wide open! An’ the jokers on the street wouldn’ let ’im bother ’im neither, ’cause he was right!”
Aunt Tish held her head high, proudly. Like somebody important. Amerigo thought hard of someone important with whom to compare her. Old Jake, but he’s a man. Maybe Aunt Rose? She wasn’t old enough. He thought of Miss Moore, of Grandma Veronica. He thought of a queen. Her head high, poised upon a long slender neck that swept down to join her sloping shoulders, her nose thin and slightly arched with thin elongated nostrils, with thin lips, and a narrow chin coming to a point like a cat!
“They usta live down in Belvedere Holla,” Viola was saying, “in a ol’ tin shack patched up with cardboard. We usta pass by there every mornin’ on the way to school, me an’ your daddy, an’ T. C., an’ Ada, an’ Dee Dee, an’ Zoo — an’ a whole bunch of us. Rutherford an’ T. C. an’ the rest of them little ragamuffins usta throw rocks at the house an’ run!”
“Aw Babe!”
“Well, we did! An’ hide behind the trees an’ peep out to see what they’d do. An’ we all laughed to beat the band when they couldn’ catch us. We was just kids. We didn’ mean no real harm, I guess.”
And then somebody told Mr. Bowles, Amerigo thought involuntarily, his eyes fixed on the old woman.
“Somebody told Principal Bowles,” Viola was saying, and he was not surprised that he had known what she was going to say. “They had a assembly in the main auditorium that mornin’.”
“How’s it go?” said Rutherford softly, as though he were speaking to himself: “I want to tell you a story — that’s how he started! An’ man, he really told it, too, I’m tellin’ you! He had all ’um little niggahs cryin’ an’ red-eyed!”
“Once there was a beautiful young girl,” Viola was saying, “she was petite an’ quiet, an’ very intelligent an’ refined. But that didn’ mean she was stuck up. She could be a lot a fun. Most of all she liked to dance.”
“ ’Cause she was so smart she went to college,” Rutherford continued. “There she fell in love with a bright han’some young man. He fell in love with her, too. He was the smartest one in his class, the valedictorian, an’ ever’body said he was gonna be a great man. An’ so when they finished college they got married, an’ got a job teachin’ in the same school teachin’ school up north. They was from the South. He was a good-lookin’ man with fair skin an’ good hair — just like a white man. An’ ever’body loved ’um an’ respected ’um ’cause they wasn’ stuck up just ’cause they was smart an’ had a education. An’ they was happy, too.
“Then they had a baby, a boy, an’ a year after that they had a little baby girl, an’ they was proud enough to bust.
“One night, when the boy was five an’ the girl was four, they put ’um to bed an’ kissed ’um good night — just like I do you — an’ waited till they was asleep. Then they went
to a piana recital they was havin’ at Garrison School. It lasted till eleven o’clock.
“On the way home, just as they got near the house, they saw a big cloud a smoke floatin’ up into the sky. They got scaired ’cause they knew that the children was at home all by theirself, an’ they started runnin’ as fast as they could. When they got near the house they saw the fire wagon standin’ in front of the house. Big flames was leapin’ from the buildin’ into the sky. All the firemen was standin’ still, lookin’ up at the two top windows on the east side of the house. The mother an’ father looked up there, too. They saw the little boy, his name was — I never will forgit it as long as I live — Mike for Michael, an’ the girl’s name was Rosamond. They were trapped in the fire, an’ the fire was so hot that ever’body was scaired to git any closer. The firemen had to hold ’um back. They expected the walls to crumble down any minute. An’ they had to watch their children burn up in that fire — alive!
“They wasn’ never no more the same after that,” said Rutherford. “They got old. They forgot things all the time — to eat, to sleep. People usta see ’um runnin’ an’ hollerin’ through the streets at night. That was long ago, the old man said, kinda quiet-like, but that beautiful woman and handsome man are still alive and together. They live alone, in a old shack in Belevedere Holla. They live as good as they kin. They don’ do no harm to nobody. They talk to theyself a lot, an’ people think that ’cause they do that they crazy. The man has a sad an’ sometimes troubled look on his face, an’ he has to wear old worn-out clothes, that’s why the people nicknamed ’im Gloomy Gus. The woman’s called Aunt Tish ’cause she usta take scraps of colored tissue paper an’ make all kinds a flowers and ribbons an’ stick ’um in her hair.
“Children often throw rocks at ’um, but I suppose God’ll forgive ’um both, the young an’ the old people, ’cause they just don’ understand. Just like I’m sure that God’ll forgive Aunt Tish an’ Gloomy Gus for bein’ the devoted parents of Mike an’ Rosamond.”
All the while Rutherford had been speaking, Aunt Tish had been staring up at the streetlight.
“ ’Course, that ain’ exactly the way he told it,” said Rutherford, “but that’s the idea. He spoke a English that wouldn’ quit! Distinguished an’ c-l-e-a-r! An’ simple enough for kids to understand what he was talkin’ about. Takes a real educated man to do that!”
The old lady was still looking at the light.
She’s looking past it, Amerigo thought. She’s looking at the moon, at the sky — through the sky! He followed her gaze and suddenly beheld with joyful surprise a thin yellow star.
A sparrow flitted off the roof of the empty house and settled on the telegraph wire. Distracted by its flight, Aunt Tish followed its sweeping movement, smiling all the while, and then, noticing the people on the porch, she extended her arms in a greeting. Her gaze rested upon his face for more than a minute.
Her face was dirty, like it was made from mud. Fine wrinkles radiated from the corners of her black shining eyes and from the corners of her mouth and veined her neck.
“Good evening, friends!” she said with a gentle flurry of movement, displaying her long tattered dress, which dragged the ground. It was of a faded rose color and was caked with dirt and soiled with dark brown stains. Now and then she gathered her skirts in order to take a mincing step, revealing coquettishly another skirt of a faded green color of some shiny material trimmed with dirty white ruffles, and another still, bright red with a torn hem, and still another, this time a bright yellow one. She was shod in tightly laced shoes that extended several inches above her ankles. They were badly scuffed and torn at the seams.
“Good evening, friends!” she was saying sweetly, bowing deeply from the waist, blowing kisses from the tips of her long grimy fingers. She took a withered rose from her basket and tossed it up to Hazel Shields, who tossed it back into the alley with a mocking laugh. Aunt Tish watched it fall. It landed near Mr. Pete’s foot. His companion stooped to pick it up, but before he could do so, Mr. Pete kicked it into the middle of the alley.
“Oh! Poor dear!” cried Aunt Tish, wringing her hands distractedly, “you’ve lost your mother! You’ve fallen from your nest, precious, precious, precious. Lost? Lost! Are you lost? Lost! Lost!”
Her words echoed up and down the alley. The whizzing cars at either end of the alley seemed to take up the cry: Lost! Lost! Lost!
“Crazy as a bedbug!” said Miss Margret, and went into the house and slammed the door.
Mr. Pete tossed a small stone at Gloomy Gus, but he was watching Aunt Tish so intently that he did not notice. Mr. Pete picked up another stone.
“Aw-aw!” said Rutherford. “Babe, you sit up here on the porch.” Viola moved without a word, pulling Amerigo with her.
“Come! Come my sweet!” said Aunt Tish tenderly to the flower, which she now cuddled in the palms of her hands. “Here you are, sir,” turning to Gloomy Gus, who took it carefully. Then a look of fear came into her face. “No! No!” taking the rose from him. She smiled coquettishly: “I shall wear it in my hair!” sticking the flower between the wisps of dark brown hair that escaped from the edges of her hat. “Wheeee!” she threw her arms wildly above her head, causing her basket to slide off her arm and fall to the ground, scattering the withered flowers. There were carnations, roses, irises, and bruised apples, peaches, and oranges. They rolled over the cobblestones. “Come back, my children!” she cried, running after them. “Sweet dears!” gathering them tenderly and placing them carefully in the basket, which she now held in one hand while she gestured with the other, crying, “Pretty things for a pretty penny! Sweet ladies! Gallant gentlemen! Apples of my eyes, sweet honeyed hearts!”
Meanwhile Gloomy Gus stood a little to the rear and to the right of Aunt Tish, near the banister where Mr. Pete and his companion were sitting. He watched Aunt Tish intently, with love and admiration, as she offered her wares to the people on the porches. Now and then he would shake his head distractedly and shove his hands deeply into his pockets, looking warily about him, as though anticipating trouble.
“Sweet honeyed hearts!” Aunt Tish was saying. When suddenly Mr. Pete tossed a stone into the crown of Gloomy Gus’s hat. Feeling the stone, he jumped back in fright and looked wildly about him in order to discover what had happened. Mr. Pete began to laugh. The alley was deathly still. Mr. Pete looked up on the porch where Miss Hazel was sitting and picked up another stone. She looked down at her feet and smiled no more.
“Let’s see you do that step agin, Gloomy!” Mr. Pete yelled, smiling at Miss Hazel. His companion whispered something to him. Mr. Pete shook his head. “C’mon, Gloomy, do it agin!” He threw the stone at his feet. He jumped back as before. Then he held up the palm of his right hand, as a sign for Mr. Pete to leave him alone, wildly shaking his head all the while, muttering unintelligible words to himself. He closed his eyes and began to tremble.
“Aw-aw!” Rutherford muttered under his breath.
“Give the nice man an apple, dear,” said Aunt Tish. He gazed at her for an instant with a dazed expression, trying to make her realize what was happening, but at the same time struggling to fulfill her request. While still in the throes of his dilemma, Mr. Pete slipped up behind him and pulled the tail of his coat.
A murmur swept through the alley.
“Oh Lawdy!” cried Mrs. Derby.
“Rutherford, let’s go upstairs!” whispered Viola. Rutherford did not move.
Suddenly, before Mr. Pete knew it, Gloomy Gus had wheeled around, dipping into his right coat pocket and coming out with a big sandstone. He cocked his right leg in the air like a baseball player and threw it with all his might at Mr. Pete, who was just gaining his chair. He looked up with an innocent grin just in time to see the stone coming. His friend jumped aside and the stone crashed against the leg of Mr. Pete’s chair and sent him sprawling into the alley.
A sudden burst of hilarious laughter filled the air. His companion laughingly helped him up off the ground. Mr. Pete loo
ked down and saw that his shirt was dirty and torn at the sleeve. His face became very red and his eyes looked as though they would bulge out of his head. He looked angrily at Miss Hazel, who was laughing at him. Miss Margret came out on the porch and sat down beside Miss Hazel and laughed at him, too.
Mr. Pete, in a rage, rushed blindly toward Gloomy Gus, who stood with his back to him, staring dumbly at all the laughing people. Tears stood in his eyes. Aunt Tish greeted this outburst of laughter as though it were an ovation. She threw more and more kisses at them and proffered her rotting fruit.
“You old son of a bitch!” Mr. Pete yelled, and slapped Gloomy Gus, who because his back was still turned did not know who had hit him. His hat flew in the air and landed on the ground a few feet away.
“Pick up that God damned hat!” said a voice. It was Big Tom Johnson, standing on top of Mr. Pete. His eyes flashed angrily and the veins stood out on his neck. Mr. Pete looked up at Big Tom with surprise. His face grew white. He looked down at Gloomy Gus’s hat, then he looked again at Tom, and from Tom to his companion. He returned his gaze without saying a word. Suddenly Mr. Pete cried out, “Git the nigger!” to his friend, and swung wildly at Tom. Tom stepped quickly aside, and crashed his huge right fist against the side of Mr. Pete’s head and, before he could fall, jolted him with a staggering left to the midsection. Mr. Pete crumpled heavily to the ground where he lay, doubled in two, holding his belly. Then Tom faced his companion, but he did not move.
“He-he-he-heee’s scaired as-a as-a as-a jjjack-rabbit!” cried Unc.
“Naw he ain’,” Rutherford replied, “he’s just got good sense, that’s all.”
Tom turned and walked up the alley toward his house.
“Don’ go to bed tanight, nigger!” cried Mr. Pete, staggering to his feet. Tom turned slowly, deliberately, and said:
“I ain’ intendin’ to go to sleep tanight. I’m gonna be settin’ right up there — on my porch. Now you take me for a ride!”
When he reached his porch Miss Myrt ran down the steps and said something to him that no one else could hear. He brushed her recklessly aside and stalked into the house. Gertrude, his wife, rushed in after him. After a few minutes Tom appeared on the porch with two shotguns and a pistol. He was wearing a jumper. He withdrew a box of shells from his pocket and sat down on the steps and started loading his guns.
Such Sweet Thunder Page 12