Such Sweet Thunder

by Vincent O. Carter

  “One … two … three …”

  Viola unconsciously tapped the can against the table as he counted, while Rutherford counted behind him. Presently, she felt something rattling in the can and looked inside, and then she stole a quick glance at them.

  “Fourteen,” Rutherford was saying.

  “Fourteen,” he repeated, looking at Rutherford with a broad smile. “Sixteen, seven-teen, eighteen.”

  Viola tucked the can under her apron and stole quietly into the front room. With trembling hands she shook out the folded piece of paper, unfolded it, and withdrew a stiff neatly folded bill. She clamped her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. Then she withdrew her handkerchief from her apron pocket and blew her nose in the middle of it and wiped her eyes with a corner. She tiptoed to the middle room, eased the bureau drawer open, opened her handbag, and put the bill in her coin purse. Then she closed the bag carefully and quietly closed the drawer.

  “Unh!” Rutherford exclaimed as she entered the kitchen, “this cat’s got six dollars and thirty cents, Babe! Kin you beat that? Five years old with six dollars all to hisself! Boy, you sure is lucky, you hear me?” He smiled mischieveously: “You gonna loan your daddy enough for a haircut an’ a package a cigarettes?”

  “Here!” pushing the pile of coins toward his father.

  “Naw, that’s all right, I was just kiddin’.”

  Viola’s eyes got wet again. She reached for her handkerchief.

  “I’ll loan you some, too!” he said very seriously. “How much you want? Here!” pushing the money toward her.

  “You keep your money, babe,” said Viola, “you gonna need it to buy all the Chris’mas presents you wanna buy. You finished your list, yet?”

  “Yes’m!”

  “Let’s see.”

  Rutherford took up his paper and resumed reading while he fetched the list from his drawer in the vanity dresser.

  “Eh, you an’ Dad,” mumbling “Dad an’ you” under his breath. “An’ Aunt Rose, Aunt Lily, Miss Sadie, Miss Allie Mae, Tommy, Toodle-lum, Uncle Billy, Mrs. Derby, Chris’mas tree, Ardella, T. C., Miss Chapman, Mr. Derby, Turner an’ Carl an’ Eddie, an’ I ain’ gonna give Sammy nothin’ … an’ Wi’yum an’ Lem an’ —”

  “Ain’t you gonna give Unc nothin’?” Viola asked.

  “An’ Unc!”

  “What about your Aunt Nadine an’ ’em, Amerigo?” said Rutherford, smiling over the edge of his paper.

  “I guess so,” he said worriedly. “Aunt Nadine, Uncle Charlie, an’,”

  “Aw, I was jus’ kiddin’, Amerigo,” Rutherford broke in. “You can’t give all those people nothin’ with no six dollars! Besides, you don’t wanna spend all your money. Keep some — to have some fun with, yourself. All ’em jokers ain’ givin’ you nothin’.”

  “It ain’ the gift, it’s the spirit that counts ’cause the Lord is good to people that’s good to other people that gives ’um some a what they got!”

  “He’s got you, Rutherford!” Viola laughed.

  “Well — it’s your money. But I’d be damned if I’d give it all away like that!”

  “Yes, he would,” said Viola.

  “Who — me? Woman, you crazy? Never!”

  “Yes, he would, Amerigo, your daddy’s just talkin’.”

  Just after supper the rain froze into driving sleet. Sounds like sand, he thought. He went to the window and watched the tiny crystalline pellets bounce against the ground and scatter in all directions, as if they were alive. And then he heard the sound of the toilet flushing, followed by the swish of a woman’s underwear. Always flush the toilet when you about to do somethin’ he heard Rutherford say, as the door on Miss Sadie’s side whined quietly to and the bolt slid gently home. Then the people in the kitchen can’t hear you.

  Seven dollars an’ thirty cents! he thought suddenly, and at the same time reflected that Miss Sadie always flushed, but Mr. Nickles never did.

  “I got seven dollars an’ thirty cents!” he said, turning to Viola who was clearing away the dishes. “Miss Sadie’s gonna give me a dollar!”

  “Yeah, but you ain’ got it yet, don’ count your chickens before they hatch!”

  He imaginatively removed the promised dollar from the six dollars and thirty cents and pushed it into the corner of his mind where Miss McMahon’s milk bottles and Mrs. Fox’s dime were. Then he turned to the window again and tried to decide whether or not he ought to buy Santa a present.

  Meanwhile the sleet on the ground and on the roofs began to glisten within the wide circle of light thrown by the street lamp. The alley gradually came to look as though it were covered by a thin layer of polished glass. Long thin icicles hung from the lamp’s undulated rim. The electric wires glittered brightly, while fine points of shimmering light shone upon the grated surface of the sewer’s iron lid. The steps and the banister railings became dangerously slippery. And now, here and there, slanting streaks of yellowish light glided across the alley’s icy surface and burst into powdery explosions and dust settled over thin stretches of cobblestone in front of the houses. Ashes, he thought.

  At his back Rutherford dozed in the comfortable chair, while Viola sat on the sofa opposite the Spanish lady who still placidly ate her red apple upon the silver veranda, and impatiently knit a ball of wine-red wool into an afghan for Aunt Rose.

  Presently she glanced at the star-spangled sky above the veranda, cast a thoughtful glance at Rutherford, who happened to look up from his dozing with a startled air, and smiled warmly, almost apologetically at him.

  “It’s about your bedtime, ain’ it, babe?”

  He let the curtain fall between him and the falling sleet and got ready for bed. Rutherford stirred sleepily, and when Amerigo wasn’t looking, Viola beckoned Rutherford into the kitchen. When the front room light went out and he was settled in bed, he heard them speaking in hushed, excited voices.

  “Hey-hey!” Rutherford shouted.

  “Ssssssh!” Viola whispered.

  And the dark front room was suddenly filled with bright silvery secret hissing whispers.

  “Ummm,” Miss Chapman hummed the pitch note.

  “Ummm,” the class repeated.

  Her hands swooped upward and fell:

  “Si-i-lunt night, Ho-o-ly night, All is calm, all is bright!”

  “Ssssh,” whispered Miss Chapman, pressing down the obtrusive sound with the opened palm of her outstretched hands.

  “Round young Vur-ur-gin, Mo-theran’Chil’, Hoooo-ly En-funt, so ten-deran’ mild. Sleeeeeep — in Hea-vun-ly pe-eee-ce! Slee-ee-ep in Hea-vun-ly peeeeace.”

  “Now once again — softly!” she whispered sweetly. “Ssssh!” cutting her thin silver whisper in two with her sharp vertically poised forefinger.

  “Si-i-lunt night,”

  Big moons of light hung from the ceiling, diffusing a soft glow throughout the room, while the deep amber light of December, with much blue, much silver in it, filtered through the window, silhouetting the wreaths that hung before the panes, each with a big red bow-ribbon at the top, and within each wreath a little white candle whose flames licked the hoarfrost from the windows and made it glisten like rain.

  “Sleeee-eee-ep in Heaaaa-vun-ly peeeee-eace!”

  “Shall we turn off the lights?” asked Miss Chapman.

  “Yeah!” they cried in chorus.

  “Zenobia, you may turn off the lights!”

  Zenobia, the chosen one, proudly marched up to the light switch:

  Click!

  Candlelight flared up! Each child looked into the mysterious face of his neighbor with a “Oh!” and a “Ah!”

  “O, little town of Bethlehem —” Miss Chapman began to sing. The children joined in, and the candle flames twittered, as if for joy. They flickered through the eyes of the faces buried beneath the thin layer of ice beneath the silver trees. And now the hoar-blue houses beyond the window took on the air of dark faces wrapped in cellophane; their windows were eyes flooded with soft yellow light:


  “An’ in Thy deeeeep an’ en’less sleep … the si-i — lunt staaaaars go by.”

  “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!” cried Miss Chapman.

  “MERRY CHRIS’MAS!” rang around the room, mingling with the excited crinkle of red and green tissue paper filled with red and green candies wrapped in cellophane!

  Rrrrrrrrr-ing! rang the bell. And all the doors of all the rooms burst open, and the smiling laughing hilarious ring of MERRY CHRIS’MAS AN’ A HAPPY NEW YEAR! poured into the halls and echoed throughout every corner of the building. All under the stern glance of the thin-lipped white man with the writing underneath his picture that said: George Washington!

  “Don’t slam it!” cried Viola good-naturedly, as he burst up the stairs.

  Boom! slammed the door.

  The cheerful atmosphere of the house flashed warm and rosy against his face. He laid his cap and coat on the chair and looked around with satisfaction. Fresh clean curtains stood out from the windows, and the Christmas wreaths shone through the curtains. The bright red and orange flowers in the front room rug caught his eye. He sniffed for the faint odor of ammonia water, remembering the foam it made when Rutherford had scrubbed it the way he did at the hotel. And now he saw the bed in the middle room. Actually, he had seen it the first thing, but had purposely saved it till last. It was covered with a pink silk spread, and a beautiful doll in a dress of ruffled silk sat between the two pillows. And in the middle lay the tantalizing pile of Christmas packages!

  “Don’t touch a thing!” Viola cried from the kitchen, and so he had to be contented with merely looking at them. At the same time he wondered:

  “How did she know?”

  The packages were wrapped in beautiful Christmas paper with cords and ribbons of gold and silver. Two were wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with stout cord string.

  “Them’s for Gran’ma an’ Aunt Florence an’ Uncle Pope in California.”

  “Unh,” cried Rutherford as he entered the kitchen a little while later. The wind had whipped the color into his face and his eyes flashed with pleasurable excitement. “The house looks pur-d-a-y!”

  “Does look nice, don’t it?” Viola replied. They flashed secret signals to one another when their eyes met, and the sound of frying pork chops and yellow corn rose up and animated their glances with laughter. Amerigo laughed, too, with a secret silver joy that no longer took notice of the sealed-up chimney hole in the wall behind the stove.

  And then supper was over. Talk died down. A fresh windy calmness settled over the houses and over the streets. The sound of the streetcar clanging down the alley rose on the wind, accompanied by occasional shouts and intermittent bursts of music up and down the alley. Doors flashed open and banged shut. And then silence. And the wind. And then the wind died down. And then all was quiet.…

  “Lookie! lookie! lookie!” he cried the following afternoon, waving a dollar bill in the air, as Viola entered the door burdened with two large brown paper sacks filled with groceries. “I told you! I told you!”

  “Did you thank ’er?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Yes’m!”

  “Close the door. My hands are freezin’! An’ don’ slam it!”

  Boom!

  “What you say?”

  “Nothin’.” She set one of the heavy sacks on the drainboard and laid the other on the table. “Look!” she said, emptying its contents: big red apples streaked with red and orange color, with “knuckles” on top of a big pile. Viola put them in the big cut-glass punch bowl. On top of the apples she arranged a tier of flaming oranges with “S-U-N-K-I-S-T” written on their skins in purple letters. And then came the layer of tangerines:

  “Close your eyes an’ open your mouth!” she said. He shut his eyes tight and opened his mouth wide:

  Frog eyes! Frog eyes! he heard Leroy and Etta yelling, and then his cap flew through the air. He opened his eyes.

  “Aw, you cheatin’!” cried Viola, holding on to the stem of a huge bunch of grapes that were only halfway out of the sack. “Just for that you don’ git none! Here.” She gave him the sack. “Some fell off you kin have them.” Staring at the enormous bunch of grapes, he let the sack fall, and grapes ran all over the floor.

  “Muckle-head!” Viola laughed at him. “Serves you right!”

  “Them’s the biggest grapes in the w-h-o-l-e w-o-r-l-d!”

  “Them’s the biggest grapes in the w-h-o-l-e w-o-r-l-d!” she cried, mimicking him. “You forgot to say: A million of ’um!”

  “Do I always say that?”

  She laughed harder, threw her head back.

  From California! he thought, as the laughter died down, hearing Rutherford exclaim:

  “Cucumbers as big as watermelons — almost!”

  “Aw — Rutherford!” Viola had protested.

  “No kiddin’, Babe! I seen ’um in a magazine!”

  She arranged the grapes on top of the apples and oranges. He thought of Mrs. Crippa’s grapes in boxes piled higher than Rutherford’s head every year in the backyard. That’s where wine comes from. Troost Hill swooped down across the avenue, across the streetcar tracks, under the slanting shade of spreading trees in front of neat little gardens with trellises filled with vines burdened with grapes, all the way to Garrison Square to the school where he would have to go until he was a man and became president.

  Next year! Just then a pungent flicker of yellow color flashed before his eyes.

  “I don’ know what I’m gonna do with these bananas!” Viola was saying.

  Next year!

  “Aw — it ain’ no …”

  And suddenly there was the clacking sound of nuts rattling in a sack, followed by a “ping” as they crashed against the glass bowl, which was not as deep as the punch bowl: black and English walnuts!

  “We usta go down in the country,” he heard Viola saying, “to Aunt Rose’s cousin Car’line’s, an’ gather ’um in gunnysacks, an’ take ’um home an’ keep ’um in the dark till they got ripe. An’ black! My hands’d be all stained for days!”

  Hazelnuts tumbled out of another little sack.

  Toodle-lum nuts! he giggled. Then pecans fell, and almonds. Finally there were no more nuts. Viola took the bowl into the front room and put it on the table next to the comfortable chair, under the approving eye of the bird-of-paradise. Amerigo followed her back into the kitchen where she put the bananas into a straw basket with the dates and figs, and then she started taking things from the other sack, which she placed on the drainboard.

  The rich flurry of succulent color made him dizzy as he oscillated between the front room and the kitchen. That evening when he had bought the tree all the lights were on the tree he had bought and chosen all by himself, and the bright fuzzy cords of gold and silver hung from it, with a star at the very top, and a mound of snowflake snow at the foot to put the presents on, he sat on the floor in the front room of his house with his mother and father and thought: I hope it never changes!

  “Chris’mas is now, ain’ it?” he asked his mother.

  “How can it be now when Santa Claus ain’ even come yet?”

  He allowed his eyes to wander up the wall behind the gas stove. It was clean! The flowered pattern stood out bright and clear. He could see the round, well-defined imprint of the covered chimney hole better than ever before. His glance fell to the floor upon which the crisscross pattern of light from the grating of the stove was reflected.

  Where’ll I hang my stockin’? he wondered with a weary yawn. His eyelids closed slowly. He breathed heavily. The rich savory aroma of all the wondrous colors that were Christmas filled his lungs. He felt himself rising into the air, coming to rest upon something cool and clean. Then a cool blue-blackness covered him. He shivered and half opened his eyes.

  “G’night, baby,” Viola was saying.

  “Night, son,” said Rutherford.

  The light flashed out. The middle room door closed quietly. He lay wide awake in the dark. Gradually he perceived a thin crack of
rosy light, as wide as a coarse hair, cutting the door into two unequal parts. And now a faint, very faint silver light, filtering through the window, through the hole in the middle of the wreath. His eyes closed heavily upon it. A noise! The click of the bed lamp behind the closed door:

  Zenobia, you may …

  Christmas Eve morning was cold and frosty and everything that breathed made steam. The air tingled with the sound of bells, even the bell on John Henry’s bicycle. They filtered through the music, organ music, and the music of choirs singing because it was Jesus’ birthday a long time ago when people rode camels.

  And he continued to think of Jesus who was born in an old barn with the mules and the chickens and the cows and things, and of Joseph who was His father, like Rutherford, and of Mary who was His mother, like Viola. They’re playing and singing about that because tomorrow it will be Christmas after Santa Claus comes, and then everybody will get a lot of presents and Dad will have to work half a day, and then we’ll eat the dinner with a reeeeeal big turkey like the Puritans and everything. At Sunday school they’ll have a big tree with baskets for the poor people and a present for everybody in the church on it. And then I’ll come home. And then Dad’ll come home with a lot a money that the people at the hotel give him.… And then we’ll eat, after T. C. and Miss Mabel come. And I’ll get the drumstick!

  In the afternoon the turkey came in a big package, its long dead neck dangling down, its forked feet hanging limply, toenails dirty.

  The afternoon was quiet, but he couldn’t go out and play because Viola said it was too cold, in spite of the fact that the sun shone brightly and hard, until the air, when he tried to look straight up from the porch, looked as though it were burning.

  Toward evening Viola let him take the dime store star off the tree and put the one Old Jake had given him on the top branch.

  It was dark when Rutherford came home, and they all ate, real quiet-like. After supper everybody put presents under the tree with a little card with a Santa Claus or a bunch of holly leaves with red berries on it and the name of the one it was for.