Such Sweet Thunder

by Vincent O. Carter

  “Ohhhhh — my good Lo-ord!” shouted the first tenors, and his mouth flew open with wondrous admiration.

  That’s Roscoe Howard! he thought, remembering the enthusiastic sighs of the girls the first time he had heard the choir sing.

  A tall, smooth black young man from Texas, like the reverend, with wavy hair and feathery eyelashes, like Dad’s, his lips quivering beneath his thin mustache and regular nose, trembling with the vibrations of the sad sound suspended above the sustaining hum of the choir, which now replied:

  “Show me the waaaaaay! to entah the charriot — an travel along!”

  “Gonna serve my Lord while I have breath!” the sopranos declared.

  Earline! A name he had come to know with a nervous sensation of pleasure and regret, adoring the shy quivering dimpled voice that made her bosom heave and her eyes shine and her fingers fidget with the note she was trying to pass to Roscoe.

  “Wait!” Mr. Rogan shouted. “Miss Whisonant! Is this a choir rehersal or a crap game?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Rogan,” she answered in a mincing voice.

  “It is nottt a crap game, Miss Whisonant! NOR is it an English composition class — Now pass that damned note to Roscoe — or put it in your pocket, but in GOD’S NAME STOP TWISTING IT!”

  Earline blushed amid the gale of laughter that immediately swept through the room.

  She loves Roscoe, Amerigo thought, sorry, infinitely sorry, that he could not sing first tenor.

  “Now take it from where we left off!” Mr. Rogan was saying.

  “Ohhhh — my good Lo-rd!”

  “Show me the waaaaaay!” This time the basses answered.

  Cecil Jefferson. His regular black face with the playful mischievous eyes made him think of Turner’s eyes when he said: “Give ’um the claps, men!”

  “Show me the waaaaay!” the basses were singing, and as they held the note, Cecil’s bottom jaw extended, dropped, like the jaw of a great steam shovel, as though the low note were rolling out of his mouth, up from the bottom of the great river.

  He loves Edna. Alto. The word love detached itself from the words around it, separating into sonorous notes that tripped up and down the scales of the song — now inflaming the tenors, now the sopranos, now descending to the deep shades where the solemn basses pined for the altos.

  “Gonna serve my Lord while I have brea-eth!” the baritones declared, and he observed that Sidney was a baritone and that they sit behind the altos. He’s gonna get a scholarship and be a great singer! He loves Willa, second soprano.

  “So I can see my Je-sus aaaaa-fter de — ath!” Virgil. He had long eyelashes like his sister, Ruth. First tenor real-verreh high! But not like Roscoe. Loves Margret Raves who isn’t in the choir. Off-white, pretty bosom, and a gap between her front teeth like the Wife of Bath. But she doesn’t love him.

  The notes arranged themselves into a minor chord, as his affections vacillated between Edna who was Jeff’s and Earline who was Roscoe’s and Willa who was Sidney’s and Margret who wasn’t Virgil’s. They were all older than he and would graduate next year and go to college. A familiar feeling of dread gathered around the thought of next year when they would go away, when the singers of the song would go away, when the notes would receive their diplomas and go off to college.

  I hope it never changes! said a voice from the shadowy reaches of the past, as he sang his way through the days and weeks, searching for the four little notes through the medium of which his energetic second tenor might send the sad sound soaring through the air to engulf the burning question.

  “Boy!” Viola declared, noticing the urgency with which he stuffed a biscuit into his mouth. “You gonna kill yourself if you keep on goin’ like you goin’!”

  “Gotta go to the choir rehearsal!”

  “Rutherford, talk to your son!”

  “Stop crammin’ that food in your mouth like your momma tell you!”

  “He’s runnin’ from mornin’ till night!” Viola declared. “Don’ never stay home no more. Singin’ in that choir, an’ runnin’ out to Roscoe’s an’ Earline’s an’ ’em’s all the time! I don’ see how he has time to study! Comes home every evenin’ loaded down with books an’ don’ neeeeever open ’um!”

  “That little joker sure likes to carry them books!” Rutherford said: “Hey! hey! A intellectual! Well, sonny, before you git out a here tanight, I want to see your homework!”

  “Aw Dad! I did it! Eny-anyway, all I had to do was mostly readin’ — a reading assignment.”

  “Zaaaaaaaawlways got a excuse! Well, we’ll see what you been doin’ when your grade card comes. Singin’ all the time! Better be tryin’ to git somethin’ in your head. It’s a cinch you can’t sing you way through college, that is, if you git in at all!”

  IF?

  “Anyway,” Rutherford was saying, “what you doin’ out to Edna’s house all the time! I thought she was supposed to be Jeff’s girl!”

  “She is! We’re just friends, that’s all.”

  “Unh! You is a fool! Wastin’ all your time talkin’ to somebody else’s girl an’ ain’ gittin’ nothin’ out a it. Better git yourself a girl a your own. What do you talk about — till twelve o’clock at night?”

  “Life!”

  “Unh!” he grinned, “what do you know about life, little niggah, ain’ never missed a meal since you was born! Git me that paper, boy!”

  He fetched the paper for his father and resumed his meal in a frustrated silence, hovering on the periphery of his chosen circle of friends who were all held together by the song. An irrepressible sigh stuck in his throat and prevented his biscuit from sliding down.

  Better git you a girl a your own! said Rutherford’s voice, and he made a mental review of the faces his own age, the faces from R. T. Bowles. He ran toward this one and that one, but no sooner than he arrived than they divided themselves into pairs that whispered and giggled intimately, noses touching, lips touching, arms locked in hipgrinding embraces within the aura of tiny red lights — rose and blue — burning weakly in smoke-filled rooms, to the pulsating rhythm of the slow sad song, inflaming his sensibility with a desire and shame that dissolved in the hot rushing waters of disgust.

  Better git you a girl of your own!

  All of a sudden it sounded like Tommy’s voice.

  I don’ care answered another voice, and he heard the needle pop and crack in the whirring groove of the phonograph, and a tall melodious articulate voice declare:

  “If I — ee diddidn’t care-eh … more than words ca-an say — ee …”

  I don’t care! Anyway, the kind of girl I want … I want a girl who … who …

  The overwhelming import of this speculation forced the soggy biscuit down his throat, and he looked up in time to hear his father exclaim: “Unh!” behind the pages of the Star.

  “What?” Viola asked.

  “Looks like things gittin’ tough! Every day now, you don’ see nothin’ but headlines ’bout military conferences an’ stuff. Germany’s makin’ pacts an’ treaties. Looks like Europe’s choosin’ sides before the big bang!”

  “Well,” said Viola, “I sure hope we don’ git mixed up in that mess!”

  “We all goin’ when the wagon comes,” said Rutherford gravely. “I’ll tell you one thing: If England goes, we goin’, too! Ain’ never been a war in history when we didn’ help England!”

  “The Revolutionary War!” Amerigo said with a facetious twinkle in his eyes.

  “Aw, li’l niggah — you know what I mean!”

  “Ne-gro!”

  “Listen, li’l niggah, you don’ go correctin’ your poppa, you heah?”

  “He’s right!” Viola exclaimed with an amused grin. “That’s what he’s git-getting an education for! Aw say, I almost forgot to ask you, how’s ol’ T. C. doin’?”

  “That’s a cryin’ shame!” said Rutherford, shaking his head. “That joker throwin’ away that good job at the station. He didn’ say nothin’ ’bout that. An’ then he went to wo
rkin’ on the road gang, layin’ track! He thinks he’s so strong! ’Em ties like to killed ’im! An’ now he’s half sick — an’ won’ go to the doctor. Teet’ all fallin’ out.”

  “He’s got such beautiful teeth!” Viola said sadly.

  “Yeah … I spoke to ol’ man Mac for ’im an’ he kin start to work with me Mond’y. We’re shorthanded as it is. It’s hard to keep somebody with that measly sal’ry the ol’ man’s payin’.”

  “Did you ask ’im ’bout that raise?”

  “I ain’ had a chance yet, the ol’ man bought a new hotel an’ it’s keepin’ ’im busy. An’ you know ol’ lady Studhoss ain’ gittin’ up off a nothin’ unless the ol’ man says so.”

  Amerigo rose from the table.

  “Eh … I’m goin’ now, Mom.”

  “Put on your coat, it’s cold outside.”

  “Aw Mom!”

  “Put on your coat!” Rutherford said.

  “Yessir.”

  He put on his coat and dashed out into the street.…

  Oh Skylark! have you anything to say to me? he sang, his ears filled with the dulcet intonations of Billy Eckstine: Won’t you tell me where my love can be? Is there a meadow in the mist, where someone’s waiting to be kissed? He scanned the meadows spreading out under the misty autumn evening and the splinters of light that escaped from the shaded windows of the houses he passed. Skylark! Have you seen a valley green with spring, where my heart can go a-jour-ney-ing?

  Through the whirl of eventful days crowded with painful movements, which fell to the feet of Friday night:

  “Hey! hey! no more classes till Mond’y!”

  “Goin’ to the pajama party?”

  “Where?”

  “At Baby Miller’s down on Fourteenth Street.”

  “You goin’?”

  “You know I’m goin’! All them fine mellah chicks?”

  “Can anybody go?”

  “Aw man, you too nice. A pajama party ain’ nothin’ for squares!”

  That evening after supper:

  “Mom?”

  “What?”

  “Can I go to a party over on Fourteenth Street at Baby Miller’s house?”

  “You invited?”

  “Anybody can go!”

  “I guess so, but be home by eleven o’clock!”

  “Aw, Viola!” Rutherford exclaimed, “to be home at eleven o’clock he’s gotta leave at ten — an’ you know a party ain’ even warm till it’s almost over. You be in here by twelve o’clock, boy — but I mean twelve, you heah!”

  “Yessir. Mom?”

  “Now what?”

  “You got any change? Just in case I have to buy somethin’, or break my leg and have to get a taxi?”

  “Boy, you gittin’ expensive! You better get yourself a little job so you kin earn your own spendin’ money. Here.” She gave him fifty cents.

  “That ain’ no lie, Amerigo,” Rutherford said. “You ain’ no baby no more, you gittin’ to be a man.”

  His senses quickened to the word man.

  “You always goin’ to the show, an’ to dances an’ parties — football games an’ stuff. It ain’ gonna hurt you to earn a little money to treat your girlfriends —”

  “I haven’t got a girlfriend — and I’m not going to have one, till I find the right one. One that’s intelligent, with good manners, and I’m realleh in love with her. And then I’m going to marry her — after I finish college and get to be somebody and have enough money for a home with nice furniture and everything. A real lady who plays the piano, maybe,” and has red hair he thought, with snow shining in it, in a blue uniform with a white blouse and a real verreh white collar and pretty teeth and soft brown skin with a gold chain around her neck, copper in the evening sunlight, and tall and straight with polished fingernails like a queen! His heart throbbed with emotion as the images of all the women he had known fused into one overpoweringly beautiful apparition that shone with celestial splendor.

  “You gonna have a hard time finding the kind a woman you want.” Viola said thoughtfully.

  “You better git out a here, if you goin’,” Rutherford said.

  Sharp as a tack in his Sunday suit, he shifted into first with a swagger, and then into second on the wing of a song and then — breezed on down to Fourteenth Street.

  Someday she’ll come along, the girl I love! And she’ll be big and strong, the girl I love, And when she comes my way —

  Rrrrrrrring!

  The door opened. He stepped into a warm corridor softly illuminated by a rose light that almost obscured the coats, hats, pants, shirts, blouses that hung on hooks around the walls. A tall slender large-eyed woman looked down at him. “Come on in, son, and take off your clothes,” she said, and disappeared into the adjoining room. Before she closed the door he caught a glimpse of several girls whom he did not quite recognize swimming in the soft seductive light, two lounging on the rug with cushions under their elbows and one standing against a wall. They wore semitransparent pajamas through which he could see the purple patches on their bosoms. A pajamaed couple were dancing: close, slowly, hardly moving, arms locked, lost in the intimacy afforded by their closed eyelids.

  The woman reappeared.

  “Ain’t you undressed yet?” handing him a pair of pajamas.

  “No’m.”

  “Well, git at it or go home. This ain’ no sideshow!”

  She entered the kitchen through the door on the right, through which he caught a glimpse of Baby Miller with her arms around a boy whom he did not know. She was kissing him on the lips and rubbing him all over with her hands. Another boy whom he did not know but whom he had seen at school stood near the refrigerator sucking on a cigarette in a strange way. His eyes were glassy like the eyes of the men and women after they used to come out of Miss Sadie’s apartment, and he smiled as though he were dreaming. The kitchen was full of smoke.

  A feeling of desire, like nausea, rolled up from the pit of his stomach into his throat. His back pressed against the door he had entered, his hands blindly, instinctively grappled for the knob.

  Saturday morning he made his bed quickly in order to hide the stain on the sheet, which was all that was left of the warm ooze into the depths of which he had slipped through what had been left of Friday night into the black room. He cleaned the apartment, polished it, shined his father’s shoes and his own and pressed their trousers, and waited for five o’clock and supper.

  “Did you have a good time at the party?” Rutherford asked once they were seated at table.

  “Yessir.”

  He bit into the juicy hot dog sandwich and licked the mayonnaise from his lips. Viola poured the beer. He drank, freeing the gummy bread that clung to the roof of his mouth, and waited for the evening filled with the smell of popcorn, frying hair, and more beer, and the gossipy voices of Viola and Miss Ada to float into the front room and lull him to sleep.… He turned toward the window and stared at the night light, which grew brighter, though his eyes were closed, and his thoughts wandered through the red corridors of North High, peeping into the forbidden rooms filled with the objects of all his desires. He tugged at the covers and wriggled this way and that to divert the distracting airs that delayed his descent into the deep dark blackness where the song lay, still, waiting for the redeeming light of Sunday morning.

  He opened his eyes in time to catch Rutherford’s flickering hand silencing the alarm clock, and he marveled at the familiarity of the scene: his father sitting on the side of the bed, yawning and stretching, young and strong and dependable, like the rhythm that was always beating — so that you don’t even hear it most of the time — a continual sound that had become a part of his own conception of sound, a rhythmic sound that he had heard all his life. Now he saw life as one long day. One morning when Rutherford stopped the alarm clock and dressed and made his breakfast and called out to him to get up, when Viola dashed up and out minutes later, her voice kissing his ears with some word of affection or admonition. One evening around the
supper table held together by one stream of conversation in which Rutherford was the Oracle of World Events, speaking of the machinations of men beyond the intimate walls of home, the alley, Tenth Street, the North End, the downtown of the great city, that vast throbbing pain that was the United States of America, over seas and deserts, steppes and fjords, from the summits of great mountains into the valleys of foreign cities and houses of justice — along the frontiers of angry nations feverishly preparing for war!

  Boom!

  Time reverberated within his consciousness and he tried to measure its length: Five feet two! Fourteen and a half years old. Mom and Dad are twenty-nine. He’s six feet! She’s five feet four, but she breathes the longest, then Dad, then me. He tried to calculate the length of time: Looooooooong division!

  “Boy!” cried Viola in her usual startled voice, as though somewhere deep down inside of her body was a bell that rang and shocked her from the world of sleep into the world of eternal morning.

  “Boy—”

  He looked at his mother with a smile.

  “— look what time it is!” she was saying. He noted that her articulation was perfect, and he wondered why people spoke good English at certain times and bad English at other times. Viola sat upright in the bed, her eyes pink, her fine skin veined with wrinkles from the pillow, adjusting the wanton shoulder strap. “You’d better git out a here an’ go to Sund’y school!”

  There! She’s changed her speech again! He tried to listen to his mother’s and father’s words down through the years to see if it were always so.

  “Aw Mom!” he heard himself saying, “that’s kid stuff. Sunday school! It’s enough to have to go to church, but Sunday school isn’t church! Listenin’-g to all that shouting and carrying on!”

  “All right, if you don’ go to church, you don’ go to no show! I mean that! Now you git-up-and-git-out-a-here!”