Such Sweet Thunder

by Vincent O. Carter

  “Well,” Tommy said, “I don’ want nobody’s claps!”

  “It ain’ what you want that makes you fat, it’s what you git!” Turner exclaimed with a knowing grin.

  “Man — you crazy!” Tommy said.

  “I sure don’ want ’um!” William exclaimed.

  “M-m-m-me n-n-n-neither … me neither!” Toodle-lum said.

  “How you gonna git the claps when you ain’ even had no pussy!” Carl said. “Toodle-lum! Aw haw! haw! haw!”

  “M-m-m-m my n-n-n-name is Charles! My name is Charles. I ain’ studyin’ you, now … ain’ studyin’ you.”

  “I bet you ain’ had none! Ha! ha!” William said to Carl.

  “What you wanta bet?”

  “I’d like to git ol’ Etta!” Turner said. “I bet she got some good booty!”

  “Old Etta! M-a-n! I bet she kin really do it!” Willie Joe said.

  “Listen to that little niggah!” Turner exclaimed, thumping Willie Joe on the head.

  “Ouch!”

  “That little cat can’t even git a pee hard-on! Ha! ha!”

  “Tee! hee! hee!” Lem squealed.

  “Ha! ha! ha!” Amerigo laughed.

  “What you laughin’ at?” Turner said. “You ain’ had none. Old Maxine wants to give it to you, but you too chicken to take it —”

  “That’s somethin’ bad!”

  “How you think you got here?”

  “What you mean, niggah?”

  “I mean your old man had to pull down them pants!” Turner said. “Ask Tommy, if you don’ believe me!”

  “You niggahs sure are nasty!”

  “Come on an’ git it!” Viola cried at suppertime the next evening.

  “Mom?”

  “Well, it’s about time, you hear me!” Rutherford exclaimed, stepping up to the sink to wash his hands. He looked at his father with great emotion. He watched the huge muscles in his arms ripple as he rubbed the soap between his hands. He suddenly saw his father naked that time when they went to the bathhouse and dressed in the same locker. He trembled with embarrassment and rage.

  “Wash your hands, too!” Viola was saying. He beheld her naked, her breast protruding between his upturned eye and a bearded face with a booming bass voice that made him sink tremulously into his chair and bite into his hot dog sandwich with exaggerated gusto.

  “Did you hear your momma tell you to wash your hands?” Rutherford asked.

  He rose from the table and guiltily moved toward the sink. The gummy bread stuck to the roof of his mouth and almost choked him when he tried to swallow. Finished, he sat back down.

  “An’ don’ fill your mouth so full,” Viola said, “that food ain’ gonna run away. Take your elbows off the table. Somebody’s think you never learned no table manners at all!”

  A sudden naked impulse caused the telephone to ring.

  Now?

  The shrill reverberation filled the darkness of the black room and pictures flashed through his mind like the pictures on the silver screen: a woman, prostrate, naked, upon a big white bed. The man stood over her, naked, trembling.

  Now?

  “Dad?” he cried from the moon-dark shoot outside, but his voice made no sound.

  The telephone rang. Viola picked up the receiver, smiling as she spoke, and drew her leg toward her chest, while Rutherford trembled. A face with eyes peering in the window, his father’s face looking in, and it was he who stood over the bed. Trembling.

  “Dad?”

  No sound save the sound of a flash in the dark accompanied by the thud of his body falling heavily upon the newly lacquered floor, shocking him awake. The silhouette of a huge black form between him and the window.

  “D-A-D!” he screamed. The form bent down and enveloped him in an aura of soft warm flesh.

  “It’s all right, babe,” Viola whispered softly, “you just had a bad dream.”

  The bedroom light flashed on, revealing the inquisitive lines of Rutherford’s strong dark face.

  “Has he got a fever?”

  “Naw, I don’ think so,” said Viola, rubbing his forehead.

  “Well, put ’im in the bed an’ come to bed yourself — it’s late.”

  The light flashed out. Darkness filled his eyes. His body sank once again between the troubled sheets. She covered him with the blanket. Just before the smell of her went away he felt the soft moist pressure of her lips upon his cheek. Then her silhouette was suddenly absorbed by the massive darkness between the windows.

  Occasionally he found himself walking down a dusty street with his eyes fixed upon an undulating hip beneath a pale pink dress from which a pair of shapely black velvety legs extended, toe over heel, heel over toe, forcing him to hide the heat that burned between his legs with a pocketed hand, grateful that the grinding wheels of the streetcar distracted his attention long enough for him to realize that he must cross the street and turn south along the new way to school.

  Nervously he burned through the cool shades of September, gathering around the light of the passionate leaves that fell and piled up like mounds of glowing cinders at the feet of the half-naked trees.

  As he approached the R. T. Bowles Junior High School, the scampering leaves swelled into sensuous volumes of movement and sound that made his heart pound with wild excitement. The big brick-red building, sort of like Garrison School but a whole lot bigger … different, with halls with lockers along the walls with locks that you opened by turning a little knob to the numbers to the left and to the right until it opened; halls animated by the sounds of boys and girls, laughing and talking, darting in and out of rooms according to the directions of men and women teachers who pointed this way and that.

  “Hey! hey!”

  “Look at that hinkty little chick!”

  “Yeah — Mae West!”

  “Aaaaaaa mess!”

  “Haaaaa-ha!”

  “I wanna see my ba-bay! See my ba-bay ba-ad!”

  “Yeah!”

  “Goin’ to the dance?”

  “What dance?”

  “Count’s comin’, honey!”

  “Gotta be there!”

  “Me, too!”

  “Who you goin’ with?”

  “With my ever-lovin’ mellah man!”

  “She’s the sweetes’ wo-man that I’ve ever had!”

  “With Jimmie Rushing, honey. He’s fat, but he’s cute!”

  “What you say — man!”

  “Gimme some skin!”

  “There — you got it!”

  “Hey, baby! You sure lookin’ fine. Damn!”

  “What you mean?”

  “I mean, do you love me, honey. Do you love me true? Do you love me as much as I love you? An’ you sapposed to say: ’Course I do! An’ then I say, Well jump back, honey, jump back!”

  “Who wrote that. I know you didn’ make that up all by yourself!”

  “You smart ain’t you!”

  “He! hee! hee!”

  “If I-ee didddden’tt care … more than words ca-an say!”

  “Honey I kin truck down to the bricks!”

  “Aw, that’s old. They peckin’ now, doin’ the Susie Q an’ the Big Apple. An’ I hear they doin’ a new step they call the Shag in Chi. Johnny Twine kin do ’um all, honey, an’ b-a-l-l — room!”

  “He’s cute, girl, with them broad shoulders an’ mellah hips!”

  “The rest of ’im ain’ bad, neither.”

  “Now that you sayin’!”

  “Confucius say —”

  “What he say?”

  “Aw nothin’.”

  “Confucius was a square!”

  “Yeah, he wasn’ nowhere!”

  “Yeah he was, he was from Delaware!”

  “Where’s Delaware?”

  “I don’ care!”

  “Ha! he! ha!”

  “Say, baby — you gonna give me some a that booty?”

  “Aw — you sure are baaaad!”

  “Come here.”

  “What for?”


  “You know what for! You wanna meet your daddy after school?”

  “Not if I kin help it. Where?”

  “Aaaaah-ha! ha! ha!”

  “A tiskit a taskit, a brown an’ yellow bas-kit! I —”

  “Ole Ella, man!”

  “Mella as a chella!”

  Slang! Amerigo’s contemptuous voice exclaimed: “We simpleh caaunt geo on like thisss!”

  “Listen to that cute cat! Where’d you come from, niggah?”

  “Why — whaat dew yew mean?”

  “Ain’ that a bitch!”

  “Aaaaaaaaaaw!”

  His mouth flew open just as the last bell echoed throughout the busy halls, and he found himself sitting in a room at a desk with initials scratched into its lacquered surface that were not Rutherford’s or Viola’s, staring at a woman who was the homeroom teacher, who held in her hand a stack of cards that she passed down the aisles. Name here, address there, this there, that there:

  “When you’ve finished,” said the woman, “pass them to the front. No, the address goes here, not there! Can’t you read? Pass them up! Pass them up!”

  Talk talk talk talk.

  “Quiet please!”

  Giggle giggle giggle!

  A bell ringing.

  Tramp tramp tramp — out into the hall and down the hall and into another room with another teacher with cards to fill out quietly-quickly-talk-talk-talkgiggle-giggle-giggle: myriad-colored, multitimbred, soft-throated, curly-headed, lemon-breasted, grapefruit and honeydew. Rose-lipped Shirley, taut-thighed Othella — and June, vivacious June with the wild lips burning! If I ever had a chance to … if … if, he thought, smothering the speculation with his pocketed hand:

  Bell in and bell out.

  And then the tortuous way home through the jabbering streets, the autumn-leafed tramp tramp tramp thinning out along their separate ways home. In time a sort of hysterical calmness induced by fatigue that resulted from walking ground his body down to a neutral thing, which permitted him to fly in pursuit of his harassed thoughts up the avenue and finally through a shoot behind two squat redbrick two-story houses and across a cinder-strewn yard into the alley past the filthy cluster of mean crumbling redbrick houses littered with a bunch of grimy little children who stopped crying and fighting long enough to stare at him, and into his own backyard.

  “Good evening, Mister Christian.” He was just coming up out of the cellar.

  “Good evenin’, son,” he said, smiling.

  Yellow teeth! He looks mean! Beady eyes like a crawdad. Black! I mean, dark!

  “How was it, babe?” Viola asked.

  “All right. Ever’body’s got his own locker to put his hat an’ coat an’ books an’ things in, an’ goes to a new room every time the bell rings to learn somethin’ else. I like English best.”

  “How do you know,” said Rutherford, “this is just the first day!”

  “Who’s your teacher?” Viola asked, casually looking up from her plate.

  “Eh … eh …” He dropped his fork on the floor.

  “Aw-aw,” Rutherford exclaimed, “it’s one a them high-yellah gals, I bet!”

  “Naw-it-ain’-neither! She’s brown-skinned! ’Er name’s Miss Jennings.” Amerigo stared at the ceiling, hardly breathing, oblivious to the glances that flickered between Rutherford and Viola. “A real real pretty brown! A pretty copper Indian-brown!”

  His voice echoed within the pregnant savory silence of the kitchen at suppertime. It was almost like the old kitchen. He could almost feel the presence of the old alley. The song of evening filled his mind. I hope it never changes! he thought with a suddenly emerging feeling of joy. He gazed past Rutherford’s head. The sun shone copper-amber upon the red bricks of the tall four-story apartment building across the alley. A copper-colored girl stepped out onto the porch. Her silken hair fell in natural curls around her rather plain yet attractive Indian-looking face. She was built rather low to the ground and her legs were sort of bow. She sat down on the top step and her flowered dress slid up over her knees.…

  “You in a trance?” Viola was asking.

  “You in a trance?” asked a strange faraway voice. He waited for someone to answer.

  “You in a trance?” the voice was saying.

  “Naw — he’s in love!” said Rutherford’s voice.

  “Who?” he wondered, gazing at the fulsome bosom of the girl on the porch.

  “Haw — he’s in love!”

  “Aaaaaaw!” suddenly conscious of his mother and father again, looked guiltily into Viola’s smiling face and lowered his gaze. “She’s from Denver.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I asked ’er! She said we could. We all told things about each other, an’ I asked her where she was from an’ she said, Denver, Colorado, an’ I asked her if she knew where Daniel an’ Fisher’s was —”

  “Unh!” Rutherford exclaimed.

  “— an’ she said, Yes. An’ then I asked ’er if she knew Miss Jerusha Summers who worked there makin’ chocklits —”

  “Boy, are you crazy?”

  “How come?”

  “Denver is a big city, that’s how come … with thousands of people. How do you think she’s gonna know Jerusha — just ’cause we do?”

  “It’s a dirty shame!” Viola said. “She writes us long lovely letters all the time. An’ she never forgits a birthday. She sent us that be-u-ti-ful box of candy last Christmas — an’ we didn’ even write her a card an’ thank ’er!”

  “Je — rusha!” he said, pronouncing the word as though he liked the sound of it.

  “You always were crazy about Jerusha,” said Viola, smiling and remembering, staring into her teacup as though she were seeing her face. “I bet old Elmer’ll be sick a hisself for-the-rest-of-his-black-life! For goin’ off an’ leavin’ a girl like that — stranded! — in a strange city with nowhere to go!”

  “She was just a girl,” said Rutherford, “but she had character, Jack!”

  “She slept with me, an’ you an’ your daddy slept tagether. An’ when she got back to Denver she never forgot us. We oughtta write her — ”

  “Why don’t you write, then?” said Rutherford, pouring himself a second cup of tea.

  “Why don’t you?” Viola said. “Your fingers ain’ broke!”

  “We’ll git our son to write,” Rutherford said, “he’s in high school, gittin’ all educated an’ ever’thin’!”

  “I’m going to Denver when I git big!” — the thought of Miss Jerusha filling his mind with ancient yearning, seeing the small delicate light-brown-skinned woman, almost as little as Miss Allie Mae, lying beside Viola with the soft light of the bed lamp shining down upon her face, weeping softly, as she told how Mr. Elmer went off and left her and how grateful she was that she could stay with them. He wondered how Mr. Elmer could do a thing like that to such a pretty woman. Anger and resentment against Mr. Elmer welled up within him. He bitterly regretted that he was so small, that he could not avenge her. If a thing like that ever happened to me! I’d … I’d …

  His mouth ajar, his mind overwhelmed by the thought of Beauty in Distress, he gazed out into the expanse beyond his father’s head. The sun shone upon the copper skin of the girl sitting on the porch. It glistened upon her hair. A distant, abstract rage filled his chest, his throat:

  “If —if—”

  “If what?” Viola asked.

  “Nothin’.”

  Nothing. The speculation for which there were no words catapulted him once again into the burning atmosphere germinating with particles of sound and color and movement, and caused him to lose all awareness of himself, of his beginning or of his end. What had once been his ears were now volumes filled with sound, what had been his eyes were orbits filled with light, what had been his body a configuration of driven snow, finally coming to rest, a burning droplet upon a wrinkled sheet, exposed to the light of day.

  Rustling through the big doors on the Tracy Avenue side of R. T. Bowles Junior High, up the
wax-exhaling stairs and down the busy corridor, darting in and out of the busy traffic, hurried by the warning bell, seeking and finding the room that corresponded to the subject written on the card and sliding into his seat at the sound of the last bell, the first of a series, the first of the third before English, which he liked best.

  She was twenty-five as she spoke. Her hair was soft and black and it gathered around the oval contours of her face. Her eyes were dark brown and clear, like a new baby’s eyes that only looked at clean things. Her skin was flawless and her mouth perfect and her teeth were so even and white that they looked like they had never been used!

  “I was in love with you, baby —” the blues singer was singing.

  She was tall, but not too tall, taller’n me-than I! too tall.

  “— way before I learned to call your name!”

  Pretty titt … breast … bosom — chest! Chest!

  “I was in love with you, babeh!”

  Her arms tapered gently from her shoulders and her hands were fine and clean and her nails were nicely polished, natural like Mom’s like they don’t ever … get dirty.

  “way before I learned to call your name!”

  Her hips swelled amply, modestly below her waist, around which a thin belt held her pleated skirt in place. Navy-blue. She had a little belly, but his eyes scanned it quickly.

  “An’ now you in love with someone else. I know you gonna drive me in — sa — ane!”

  Someone else?

  Boom!

  “This is Langston Hughes,” she was saying, alluding to the autographed photograph on her desk, “a very fine poet.” She knew him personally. They were friends. He was very intelligent.

  A poet writes poems, he thought. Like Omar Khayyám.… A tree … I-ee thinkk thattt I-ee shall nevah see.… a bough, a jug of wine and.… Someone else?

  “ ‘A Negro Speaks of Rivers,’ ” she was saying. “Eh, Amerigo, Amerigo Jones,” looking about for the face to correspond with the name on the list. “Will you please read the poem?”

  “I’ve known rivers.”

  As his voice droned out meter and rhyme, he searched the banks of the great river for his coming-out place. He saw himself striding forth, stepping over the crystal squares of the great city, leaping over the Power & Light and the Telephone Buildings in a bound! Boom! resounded the volley of ricocheting sunlight, and the wounded general half stumbled, half fell down Memorial Hill. Through the hazardous silence of the Twelve Year Siege he crawled and finally pulled himself up the steep incline of the closing line: