He got off the bus in Ebbensville and went into the colored waiting room and found her number in the telephone directory. Why should he stay in camp on a day like this when the CO’d left a pass for him on his table in the orderly room? Just because Scott and Worm and Lincoln were confused about the war, it did not follow that he had to be. All right, pal of mine, you stay in camp with your Double-V and we’ll pop in on your lady friend and see who wins the victory. Yuk-yuk.
The booth was hot and stuffy, and as he dialed her number a nervous sweat broke out all over him. Sitting on his cot in an empty barracks, the rest of them at the Post Exchange or the USO or somewhere, he’d been lonesome period. And way down deep down in the dumps. The phone ringing brought him back to now. At first he thought he was still calling New York City as he had done that morning in the Post Exchange and had found nobody home. But he was in Ebbensville in the hot booth and he thought, it’s probably Fannie Mae’s day to see her boy friend. So I’ll just say I’m in town and thought I’d drop in for a hot minute and if she’s busy, fine. The phone rang six or seven times and he started to hang up thinking nobody’s home anywhere in the world, when he heard a woman’s voice say, “Hello,” but it wasn’t Fannie Mae’s. She said she was her mother and Fannie Mae was at the First A. M. E. Church at the N-double-A-C-P meeting. “You want to leave a message for her? You want to leave your name with me?”
“No thank you, ma’m. Never mind,” he mumbled and stared at the receiver as he put it back on the hook. He felt a great relief, like a last-minute reprieve before the hour of execution.
He walked out of the bus station and stared across the empty plaza. What was there for him to do in a little cracker town like Ebbensville? To and fro across the plaza he saw Sunday-dressed people moving slow and easy in cadence with the dying summer day of autumn. Two days ago he’d thought fall was here, but it had been a false alarm. Not a colored person in sight. Beyond the plaza, a few automobiles crept along like they were going to the world’s last funeral. He ached for New York City. Where were Ebbensville’s colored people? If Millie had been home when he called her from the PX, he would not have come this day to Ebbensville. He would’ve talked to her and would have been fulfilled and would have gone back to the barracks and written her a letter. Damn the Bookworm.
He went back into the station and found the church’s address in the directory, came outside again and caught a colored cab and took himself to church. To heck with Worm and Rogers too.
He thought her face did something pretty when he entered. Maybe he imagined it because his stomach acted up. He quickly sat down near the back. She was chairing the meeting and calling on another lady to give the last report. Most of the time he could not keep his eyes from her and did not pay attention to the serious young women who talked about a Thanksgiving party they were planning for some soldiers from Camp Johnson Henry as part of their Double-V-for-Victory program. Just before the meeting ended Fannie Mae introduced him and asked him to stand. He could hear the pride in her voice. She said she hoped the next time he would come much earlier and talk to them about NAACP work in New York City. She told the group he had been very active with the New York branch before he came into the service. “We want to assure you, Corporal Saunders, and the rest of your colleagues that we, the colored people of Ebbensville, have the boys out in Camp Johnson Henry very close to our hearts.”
Later they sat in an ice cream parlor down the street from the church, and he stared at her and it was incredible how everything seemed to have happened before. Even back in the church he had an eerie feeling of strangeness and at-homeness clashing and merging. The stained-glass window with Mary’s boy-child blinking softly in the dying sunlight. The people waving paper fans. The smell of soap, perfume, and perspiration. He’d almost known they’d end up at the ice cream parlor on the corner, as if he’d planned it all ahead of time. And her face was so familiar to him. He thought, maybe I knew her when I was a little boy in Georgia and she was a little biddy girl. He stared at her and away again and sipped his chocolate milk shake.
She said, “I’m so glad you came today. Where’s Joe Taylor and your other buddies?” Her lovely face was all aglow. He felt deep stabs in his stomach.
“Were you born in Ebbensville?” he asked her. Maybe they grew up together in Dry Creek in the first years of their lives.
“Lived here every minute except the four years spent in college. You should’ve brought a few of the other fellers with you to the meeting.”
“Who told you I was active in the N-double-A?” he asked her. Thinking he should have told her then and there, I’m the only one could get a pass. I’m Cap’n Charlie’s favorite boy. That’s why I’m here and the rest of them are back in camp. She made him feel he had been on a long long journey and had come back home at last. Get comfortable. Pull off your shoes. Get your pipe and rocking chair. And yet she made him feel a greater guilt than Millie, Worm, or Scotty or Rogers put together. She wanted to take him at face value. Nobody should take anybody at face value. Even Worm knew better. Good Lord this child was beautiful!
She looked up from her milk shake and her entire face was smiling. “Joe Taylor told me. You were a militant leader in the youth group up there. But he didn’t have to tell me. Somehow I knew you would be.”
“Not exactly a leader,” he said. “Too busy working during the day and studying law at night.” Too busy getting ready for the race. So I can outstrip the other rats.
“And active in the N-double-A somewhere in between. My goodness, that must have kept you humming!”
No matter what I say, he thought, she’s bent on making me heroic. You want to burst her bubble, buddy? Just tell her you’re a married man and you’re Cap’n Charlie’s special boy. Or maybe this was just her “be-good-to-the-colored-boys-in-the-service” personality. Little ol’ morale builder. Maybe she made no distinction. Gave the same line to every soldier indiscriminately. Bookworm Taylor—Solly Saunders . . .
She said, “You folks have the Double-V in New York. Victory against the fascists overseas and against the crackers here at home.”
He did not want to discuss the war or politics or Double-V or NAACP. He did not want to talk at all. He just wanted to sit and stare at her and feel good with her and be with her and wallow in good feelings, and let it go at that. Yet he heard himself say, “How can we win a war against the enemy if we fight amongst each other?”
She looked surprised at first and hurt almost. Her large eyes darkened quickly to black and lowered, and she sipped slowly on her milk shake. Then she said quietly, “Where is the enemy? Who is the enemy? Why should we discriminate? A fascist is a fascist and a cracker is a cracker. The war is everywhere we find it.”
Arguing with her was like making love. It got him hot and bothered. He wanted to take her sweet face in his hands and keep it ever glowing the way it was this moment. At the same time he felt the need to fight with her, break down all her pious concepts, bring all her gods tumbling down around her, and let her worship only him. Blindly follow him everywhere with her face forever glowing like it was now this moment. All this and at the same time not to make her angry not to argue with her. Forget the war forget the Double-V. Smile again, my pretty baby. Smile, get angry, smile, be angry.
He said, “Look at it realistically. This is a house, and you and I are a family. We’re having a family spat between us. A character very dangerous to both of us tries to break into the house and take it over. What do we do? Continue fighting each other and let him take over? Or do we stop and band together to fight him off and settle our family differences later?” He’d raised his voice at her unknowingly.
“Let him have the house,” she said angrily. “What good is it? If you never let me breathe easy in it? Let him tear it down for all I care.”
Her anger made him want her.
He said, “You don’t mean that, darling.” When he heard himself call her darling, he felt a tingling racing through his body that made him warm all over. “I’m sorry, I me
an, Fannie Mae—I—” She must be aware that he was wild to be with her. Yet he told himself it was only intellectual attraction.
Her face flushed beautiful for him. “You’d better believe I mean it,” she said. “Let the house go down and we can build another one.” The perspiration on her nose.
She was teaming up with Worm and Scotty and all the rest against him. And he desperately needed somebody to agree with him, needed her, not cynical Buck or even Millie who had her own ax to grind. He needed pure agreement this day, this moment. He was a sixteen-karat phony and he needed her to believe he was the real thing with no strings attached. He had to have her on his side and close to him. He had to disagree with her and bring her to his point of view. And with no equivocation. He had to have her intellectually.
He said, “Face it. What if the working men of this country had the same attitude? There wouldn’t be any no-strike pledges and there’d be strikes all over the place and we wouldn’t be able to produce enough to win the war. The whole nation would be completely demoralized.”
She shook her head. “A nation that can be so easily demoralized is pretty sick to begin with. Double-V could help to heal it and make it stronger for the battle.” She was getting angry with him for not agreeing with her.
Stop fighting me! he almost shouted. How did he get into such a stupid argument? He had not come to town for this. He was perspiring now and getting angry and he realized what he was doing and why he was doing it. Doing his damnedest to rationalize his own position, his own being, his existence. And he wasn’t being honest with her. He knew it, but it didn’t stop him. He lowered his voice. “We have a stake in the outcome of this war. We are Americans who value freedom more than any other Americans. Maybe because we never had it.”
She stared at him. He was so articulate and handsome and she had to admit that he made sense. She’d have to think about the sense he made, over and over, and digest it and see what the results were and have it out with him again. And she wanted there to be an again. Lots of them. He knew she was weakening and he touched her cheek gently with the tips of his fingers and drew them quickly away. He wanted to take her in his arms. He was a very foolish man.
Her face flushed. “In a way you’re right of course,” she said. “On the other hand—” But she liked him and did not want to make him angrier. He was such a moody fellow. He might never come to town again. So she did not pursue the “other hand.” He was half right anyhow, and he was complicated and she wanted him to come again.
He said, “When our country is up against it, we cannot be opportunistic. We cannot take advantage of it.”
She said, “Let’s talk of something pleasanter. May I have another milk shake?”
He’d won but he did not feel good about his triumph. There was something phony about it. They got another milk shake each, and they changed the subject and talked of this and that and the other: music, books, sports, movies, and the like. He wanted desperately to capture the other mood they had begun with, but there it was between them, the Color Question and the war, and it stayed there till she drove him to the station for his bus.
The CO stood in the door staring at Solly’s bowed head for a moment. Solly was busy with the Morning Report. He looked up finally and the CO gestured for him to carry on, the CO smiling friendly-like.
“Have a good time in town, Saunders?”
Solly said, “Yes, sir.” He’d had a ball, fighting with the prettiest girl in Ebbensville.
“They tell me they got some real hot chocolate over there that just won’t stop for the red light,” the CO said. And he was really being friendly, but Solly’s nerves were wearing thin.
He didn’t say a word. He stared down at the Morning Report. The CO laughed. “I want you to make up an order tomorrow. I’m making another corporal.” He paused and Solly waited. “I want you to make sure you spell his name right. His name is Solomon Saunders, Junior.”
The CO paused again. Solly didn’t know what to say, now that he was getting ahead in the Army. Finally he said, “Yes, sir.” And that was that.
The CO said, “Keep your nose clean, boy, and you have nothing to worry about. Regimental says our paper work is the best in the whole damn regiment.” He lowered his voice. “And another thing, between me and you, they’re going to have a colored regiment on the post with colored officers and everything. Going to set it up sometime in March. Month after next they’re going to send one man from each company in the Fifty-fifth to Officer Candidate School. But I haven’t made up my mind whether I want to lose a good company clerk just so a new black regiment can get a fair-de-middling officer.” He laughed his friendly laugh again. “What you think of that?” he asked.
Solly said, “Yes, sir.” A good cool feeling rushed through his body. He was elated. There was no need to kid himself. He wanted to be an officer. He could not suppress a smile this time.
“Keep what I told you to yourself,” Rutherford said, “and stay on the ball and keep your nose clean, and you haven’t a thing to worry about from here on in.” He stood for a while watching Saunders and turned and walked out of the door.
“All right, sir.” He felt like shouting hallelujah.
Three days later he made corporal. He wrote Millie and his mother about his promotion and his great prospects. The Army wasn’t so bad after all—after all. Fannie Mae Branton did not understand the complications. Maybe it was her Southern background. She was too beautiful to be so bitter. But what difference did it make to him whether she understood or not? She meant nothing in his young life. Who’re you kidding, Solly Saunders? Who’re you kidding, buddy boy?
CHAPTER 8
Rutherford also got promoted. He made full-fledged captain, and he really loved those silver tracks. He made everybody aware of them. He had a habit of sitting at his desk and rearing back in his swivel chair with a cigar in his mouth and his long legs propped up on the desk, and if he were talking to you about something, his eyes would shift from one shoulder to the other, glancing slyly at his gleaming bars. He reminded Solly of spectators at a tennis match. He was even trying to get a little more depth out of his voice, but the deepest he could go was a tenor that flirted dangerously with soprano. But he was Captain Rutherford, company commander, and he was the one that cracked the whip, and Solly was Corporal Solomon Saunders, Junior, the company clerk. The men of H Company had fondly nicknamed it Hell Company, but the men of the other companies of the regiment called it “Rutherford’s Plantation,” and the men of H Company had earned the title of “Rutherford’s slaves.”
He felt good, the brand-new corporal did. He had been over to regimental that morning and had come back to the barracks and up the steps to the second floor when he heard the soldier sounding off. Solly started to go back down again but something held him.
“I been home to fuck Miss Scotty. Where you think I been?”
They haven’t seen you yet, even though the door is open. So go back downstairs and down to battalion and get those special orders. Get while the getting is good. Go! Go!
“What did you say?” the CO shouted, losing color.
Scotty roared like a lion. “I said I been home to fuck Miss Scotty—that’s what I said. What you trying to do, Lieutenant, make a faggot outa me or something? You got your old lady here on the post with you. You fuck her every night, I reckon—that is if you ain’t no punk or queer or something!”
The captain jumped from his chair shouting hysterically: “Shut up, Scott! That’s enough, goddammit!”
“Shut up, Scotty!” Solly softly shouted, without knowing.
“One sure thing if you don’t fuck your old lady, somebody else will do it for you. A woman gots to have it just as bad as a man. Ain’t no two ways about it—”
Solly stood there transfixed.
“Get out of here, nigger! Goddammit! If I had my forty-five with me this morning I’d blow your goddamn black brains out!”
Scotty was jumping up and down. “Onh-honh! Onh-honh! Onh-honh! I k
new it! I knew it! I knew it! I knew I would get you to tear your ass sooner or later! I knew I would get you to show your cracker, you peckerwood! You ought to be ashamed of yourself—a captain in the United States Army of Democrat America and President Roosevelt, and calling a poor little colored buck-ass private like me a nigger!”
“Get him out of here!” the captain screamed. “Somebody come get him!”
“Taking advantage of me just because you got me where you want me down here in Georgia. My feelings is hurt, Lieutenant! I really was deceived in you. I thought you was different—I—”
“Saunders! Saunders! Sergeant Anderson! Somebody! Anybody!”
Solly should have run like a thief back down the stairs, but it was too late, and he went into the captain’s office on the double. “What’s the matter, Captain Rutherford?”
The captain’s face was like an over-ripened carrot, his breathing quick and short and hard. He could hardly talk now. His big Adam’s apple seemed to have lodged in his narrow throat and choked off the words. “Ta-ta-ta-take this so-so-soldier inside and keep him there till I get back. Don’t let him out of your sight.” His face was losing color and even longer and thinner than it usually was. He looked like he had vomited his insides out and drained every drop of blood from his face. The veins in his forehead pushed against the pulled-tight surface and would pop out any minute.
“Yeah!” Scotty shouted softly. “I ain’t gon tell no lie about it. Your old lady ain’t no different from none of the rest. A queen gets bigged the same way a maid do. Tell him, Corporal. If you don’t give it to her she going begging somewhere else cause she’s bound to get it. She’ll be fucking any and everybody—”
“Get him out of here!”
Solly stared at Scotty, paralyzed and speechless. He had an impulse to fall down laughing and roll all over the floor and kick up his heels and laugh and laugh and laugh some more and laugh and laugh like never before. At the same time he was afraid for Scotty. Especially for Solomon Saunders’s expectations.
And Then We Heard the Thunder Page 11