Such Sweet Thunder

by Vincent O. Carter

  “All right, men, follow me!” said Turner in an excited whisper.

  “Where?” asked Willie Joe.

  “Sssssh! niggah!” cried Turner, poking him in the ribs with his elbow.

  “That hurts!” said Willie Joe.

  “I told you them li’l niggahs too little!” Turner cried in exasperation.

  “For what!” William demanded. “I ain’ too little for nothin’! An’ if you goin’, I’m goin, too!”

  “Well, hush up then,” said Turner. “Follow me an’ do what I tell you.”

  They turned cautiously up Tracy Avenue and walked past the apartment house. The shades of all the windows facing the street were drawn, but pinpoints of rosy light appeared through the cracks. They stole up to Tenth Street.

  “Wait a minute!” Turner whispered, watching a suspicious car roll down the street. Then he faced Eleventh Street and studied the windows and doors of the houses on both sides of the street.

  “On your toes, men!” he whispered, “an’ be ready to make a fast gitaway!”

  They came upon a parked car in the driveway that gave onto the backyard of the apartment house.

  “Cover that car!” Turner commanded softly. Willie Joe and Toodle-lum looked in the window.

  “E-e-e-e-empty … empty,” Toodle-lum whispered.

  “Forward, men!” whispered Turner.

  They stole into the yard. It was covered with cinders that cracked and squashed under their feet.

  “Ssssssh!” said Turner.

  Suddenly the back door of the apartment on the ground floor opened, flinging a bright yellow slant of light across the yard. They crouched breathlessly under the porch. Amerigo’s heart pounded wildly, his eyes fixed upon the ominous shadow that emerged from the frame of yellow light. It had a long pointed head and a hooked nose. It looked out. Listened …

  Sweat ran down Amerigo’s face and tickled his nose. He started to scratch but stopped because the sound of his bitten-off fingernail against his sweating nose made too much noise.

  The head disappeared and the light scudded back over the cinders into the house.

  Total darkness.

  Cricket-song!

  “Ssssssss!” Turner whispered, nervously poking Tommy with his elbow.

  “It ain’ me, man!” said Tommy.

  “What?” said Willie Joe.

  “Sssssss!” Turner whispered, “you gonna git us all killed! Now come on an’ be quiet!”

  They crept into a little shoot four feet wide between the apartment and the house next door. Amerigo could see the parked car through the widely spaced boards of the narrow fence at the end of the shoot. He tried to remember if its owner had had a long head and a hooked nose. He stumbled over a can.

  “God damnit!” Turner whined. “Be careful, you niggahs!”

  “Wasn’ none a me!” Lem whispered.

  “Me neither!” said William

  “Mmmmmme-me-me neither,” Toodle-lum mumbled.

  “Sssssst!” Turner touched Tommy’s shoulder and Tommy stayed the others. They stood dead still. Faint rays of moonlight filtered over the roof of the neighboring house and filled the shoot with a subtle silvery blue light.

  Turner signaled for them to move deeper into the shoot, to hug the wall of the apartment house in order to avoid the moonlight.

  “Ssssssssh!” he hissed quietly, and came to a halt. He pointed to the two windows overhead. They looked into the bedrooms of the apartment. Their shades were drawn but there was a little space about an inch wide at the bottom of the one on the left and a little less at the bottom of the other one. They were both filled with rosy light.

  Turner and Tommy who were the tallest merely stood on their toes, gripped the sill with their fingers, and stared excitedly through the crack. He tried to squeeze in between them but he was too short. Lem, Willie Joe, and Toodle-lum who were even shorter tried to scramble up the backs of Turner and Tommy who poked them irritably with their elbows and continued to fix their attention upon the rosy slit at the bottom of the window.

  Meanwhile he discovered three half bricks on the ground, which he stacked one on top of the other, and then stood up on them, on the tips of his toes, so that, straining every muscle, as it were, he was barely able to see, over the tip of his nose, through the tiny aperture. His eyes widened and all his senses took in the rosy room filled with the huge bed covered with a white sheet. A soft, round, pink-skinned young woman with brown hair lay upon the bed with her legs spread apart, the right one drawn toward her chest. She supported herself with her elbow. She was looking up at the naked slick-haired man who stood looking down at her. Trembling. Sweating. Looking. She was smiling and her lips were moving. He could not hear what she was saying, but it sounded as though she were saying: “Now?”

  The unheard word echoed within the chambers of his pounding heart. His body ached all over. He began to tremble. His sweating fingers were slipping from the sill. The bricks were slipping under his toes. Desperately he tried to secure his grasp. The woman began to squirm teasingly in the bed. Her smile deepened. Her lips parted and her tongue darted between her teeth. She drew her leg higher and repeated the unheard word.

  He fell to the ground with a loud crash.

  “Gaaaaaaaad daaam!” Turner cried, followed by the frightened scramble of a blind herd of stampeding feet crashing through the darkness, while he lay dazed at the foot of the window. With a dreamy detachment he watched the rosy border at the bottom of the window being pushed upward by a pink hand until it approximated the size of the window frame. A naked face and bosom, half submerged in shadow, stuck out of the window and looked toward the yard end of the shoot where the noise was coming from. Like the Africans in the show! he thought, but was suddenly horrified as her eyes swept down the shoot and looked right at him. Now he caught sight of the big gun she held in her right hand.

  “Little black sons of bitches!” she cried angrily. She pulled the shade down until it reached the bottom of the window frame. He was plunged in silvery blue darkness.

  She didn’t see me! he thought, crouching on his hands and knees. He started to crawl toward the back of the house. Like the Indians. But now the back door opened and light sprawled across the entrance to the shoot. The figure of a man whose upper body was cut off by shadow shot a bright beam of light over his head and pinned him to the ground. He lay as though he were dead. The light flicked out. The door banged to, was bolted. Silence.

  His face was wet with something that stank. Slowly, cautiously, he crawled through the filthy shoot, carefully avoiding the tin cans and broken bottles, hugging the shadows until he gained the street. Then he ran all the way home.

  The violent yellow moon stared at him through the window of the front room. He closed his eyes and sank heavily into the black room.

  Now?

  He lay upon the big white bed with his legs drawn against his chest. A naked woman stood over him. She had a long whip in her hand.

  “Touch the bottom rungs of the chair!” she commanded. “Now!”

  He tried to scream when the whip bit into his flesh, but the sound stuck in his throat.

  “Now!”

  The whip descended again — and again. Welts rose upon his naked body. He tried to cry out, but his voice failed him. The pain found him no matter where he tried to hide, and veined his body, like a leaf pierced by a fiery constellation of stars.

  “STOP!”

  A purple-splotched face appeared.

  “If you hit that boy again I’ll …”

  He slipped into the warm ooze of an obscurely intense feeling of shame.

  Saturday morning was a raw-yellow, noisy-blue morning. The sun stared knowingly through the window. He opened his eyes. Then he closed them and moved his head into the shade. He listened to the familiar noises that came from the kitchen and from the middle room where Viola lay, breathing three times more deeply than he.

  “Hi Sonny!”

  Rutherford stood over him. He pretended not to hear. Ru
therford stepped out the door. He lay still and waited for Viola to wake up.

  She woke up, sat on the side of the bed, and yawned. She looked at him. He clamped his eyes tight. She tiptoed barefoot to the toilet. She brushed her teeth and washed her face and combed her hair. Then she broke the beam of sunlight that stretched out toward him from the middle room window as she stepped behind the door in order to slip out of her gown and into her underwear, stockings, and finally her dress.

  “S’long, babe,” she said, as she slipped down the steps.

  His eyelids quivered guiltily. He stirred, as though the sound of her voice had awakened him.

  “Uhn … S’long.”

  Her footfall faded. He leaped out of bed and rushed to the toilet, and poured the remains of the hot water into the wash pan and scrubbed his face, arms, and legs. He stared curiously, guiltily, at the chalky white stuff that stained his thighs, which he could not rub away with his fingers.

  It’s in the bed, too! he said to himself as he covered the stain with the sheet. He straightened up the front room, the middle room, and the kitchen. Then he gulped down the oatmeal and milk his father had left him. He hurredly rinsed the breakfast dishes and stacked them on the drainboard. Seconds later he was dashing down the front steps.

  He sprang up the alley and turned into the path behind Mr. Harris’s old house. It stood next to Aunt Nancy’s house, almost at the top of the alley.

  “There’s that cat!” Turner cried. “What happened, man?”

  “Oooooo wow!” laughed Willie Joe, louder than all the others. “What happened to you maaan?”

  “You niggahs run off an’ left me, that’s what!”

  “I waited for you at the corner,” said Tommy.

  “Me, too!” said Carl.

  “That’s what you say!” he said.

  “Didn’ I, man?” said Tommy to Turner.

  “Yeah, m-a-n,” Turner replied. “But we couldn’ wait all night. We was hot!”

  “They catch you?” asked Willie Joe.

  “You see I’m here, don’t you! But m-a-n, that sure was close! Just as I fell I heard old Turner cuss, man —”

  “Just as that cat was about to git that pussy!” said Turner.

  “Yeah! An’ then I heard you guys beatin’ it through the shoot —”

  “I was first!” said Tommy.

  “But I was right on you, Jack!” said Turner.

  “I was third,” said William.

  “Me, too!” said Willie Joe.

  “What you mean, me, too, man?” said Turner. “Can’t be but one third.”

  “I was really comin’, though!” said Willie Joe.

  “What was you doin’ back there, ’Mer’go?” Tommy asked.

  “Them old bricks fell down under me, an’ the woman that was naked on the bed — man! She sure was pretty. All naked with real big titties — she stuck ’er head out the window an’ pointed a g-r-e-a-t b-i-g f-o-r-t-y — f-i-v-e six-shooter! at you niggahs. She was m-a-d! Man! Oooooooo-whee!”

  “But we was hittin’ ’um!” cried Turner.

  “An’ I was lyin’ real real still in the shadows, man.”

  “Man, I bet you was s-c-a-i-r-d! Hee! hee!” Willie Joe laughed.

  “Naw, I wasn’ either!”

  “Aw man, you know you was scaired, man!” said Turner.

  “Shucks! You’d be scaired, too. That gun was b-i-g! She cocked it an’ took aim, but you cats was gone!”

  “Done cut out!” said Willie Joe with a grin.

  “An’ man! When she went to shut the window it looked like she was lookin’ right at me. But I didn’ move!”

  “That little niggah couldn’ move!” cried Turner. “He was scaired shitless!”

  “An’ when she shut that window an’ pulled the shade down, man, I was just fixin’ to run when the back door opened up. A big m-e-a-n-lookin’ cat stuck his head in the shoot with a b-i-g flashlight in his hand. I couldn’ see what he had in his other hand. An’ he flashed it up and down.”

  “What did you do?” Tommy asked.

  “He dug a tunnel in the ground!” Turner laughed, joined by Willie Joe and the others.

  “I hugged the ground like a Indian, Jack!”

  “Old Toodle-lum was last!” cried Willie Joe.

  “Aw naw I wasn’, neither! You wasn’ in front a me, neither … neither.…”

  The sun rang out like a great golden bell! Like a Heavenly Bell, shimmering upon the blue-golden air, upon the green-golden trees, upon the red-golden houses with the gray-green-golden porches, which he knew were there, though he could not see them, as he lay in the Sunday beams that shone through the window.

  The way to church, and church, rang out with golden song. The reverend warned the faithful congregation against the consuming fires of hell, while the emerald-green, gold-edged wings of the flies flitted in and out of the open transoms through which summer sounds floated, animating his words and intensifying the eternal pain and suffering that was to be the fate of sinners.

  “Save me, Je-suus!” cried a voice.

  “He’p me, Lawd!” said another.

  Boom! his hip crashed against the ground in the darkness of the shoot an instant before the naked woman … like a statue at the art gallery … stuck her head out the window and glared angrily toward the mouth of the shoot.

  “We all a-l-l sinners!” shouted the reverend.

  “Yeah!” someone shouted, followed by a piercing soprano note that broke up into particles of light that froze in a golden sheen upon his forehead. He wriggled in his seat, and finally dashed madly, gladly out into the free air and followed the golden clouds home.…

  “Don’ forgit to tell Aunt Rose that I kin do ’er hair whenever she wants me to, you hear?” said Viola. He shook his head affirmatively as he rose from the dinner table. “An’ don’ stay in the show all night. School ain’ out yet!”

  “Yes’m.”

  “You got your clean handkerchief?”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Where’s your money?”

  “In my pocket.”

  “Straighten your tie.”

  “Git out a heah, boy!” said Rutherford.

  He stepped gratefully out through the door and headed up the alley, south. He walked out Eleventh Street, east, cautiously past the redbrick house on the corner of Eleventh and Tracy. It was quiet. Strange in the Sunday sunlight. Must have a hundred rooms … fifty anyway! He saw a woman lying upon a big white bed in every room and a naked slick-headed man standing over her, sweating and trembling.

  He looked at all the windows of the apartment and at those of the neighboring house. A stiff, unsuppressable agitation caused the pants of his Sunday suit to bulge just below his belt buckle. He looked at the sky, and then at the trees, eased his hand into his pocket, and covertly sought the shaded spots of the sidewalk, near the houses, out of general sight, as he proceeded down Tracy to Twelfth, Fifteenth, and Eighteenth Streets, past the mission house, the liquor store, the ice cream parlor, and up past R. T. Bowles Junior High School where he would have to go before he could go to North High, and then college and then — hot dog!

  “Aaaaaw shit!” shouted a woman from the apartment opposite the school. He looked up on the porch at a brown-skinned woman of twenty-five dressed in an underskirt, the left shoulder strap of which hung down over her shoulder. She wobbled unsteadily and glared angrily down into the street.

  He stared at the patch of hair between her legs against the sunlight.

  “What you lookin’ at, you little big-eyed bastard?” she shrieked.

  He tipped his hat respectfully, smiled a weak apologetic smile, and hastened up the street.

  A little past Nineteenth Street he came to a bridge. He looked down at the shining rails that sped east and west through the city.

  Gradually the tension in his pocket relaxed. He left the bridge and continued up Tracy Avenue until he came to a group of apartment houses with wooden porches and dirty yards cluttered with wild grasses and
weeds and sunflowers, but in the yard in front of the last house on the corner the grass was cut. It was soft and prickly wet, like the fresh-cut fur of an enormous green kitten, nestling around a two-story redbrick house with a clean cement porch with a neat little swing painted green. Flower boxes full of bright red flowers stood on the banister and flower beds teeming with an assortment of blooming flowers grew along the front and side of the house.

  His eyes took in the sweeping hill opposite. Through the bushes he could see the buildings of Western College. That’s where Ardella went, he thought … but I’m gonna go to Harvard and Yale where all the big shots go, Jack! I’m gonna know all about everything in the w-h-o-l-e world! He saw Viola’s face breaking up in a smile of approval, amid a din of teeming voices splashing against the shores of his consciousness like summer rain … splaying stars in the gray dust that flowed under the gate and clattered down the alley.

  “Open your mouth, boy, an’ tell us what you see!”

  “That boy’s got a head like a preacher!”

  “Whose little boy is that?”

  “Why — that’s Rutherford an’ Viola’s little boy!”

  “Don’ he look nice!”

  “Smart! An’ manners, too!”

  “A reg’ler little gen’leman!”

  “— look at them eyes!”

  “Look at that walk!”

  “Just like a little white boy!”

  He opened the gate and entered the path. All the soft grasses rared up in approval as he passed. A sparrow dipped its wings in salutory tribute! “Give ’im the claps, men!”

  Clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap!

  He bowed from the stage of a great hall filled with millions of clapping hands, “… In England an’ France!… Like old Paul Robeson, only bigger!… Bigger than … bigger’n Ira Eldridge!… Bigger’n Stokowski at the show!”

  Clap! clap! clap! clap! clap! clap!